


The Closest Star

by YagaYuu



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, F/M, M/M, Mecha, Past Abuse, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:08:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23582845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YagaYuu/pseuds/YagaYuu
Summary: She didn’t know why, though. Why the stars seemed to allign themselves in a way that she had found Blake (and Blake found her, she hoped), and she felt she could go ways in talking with her. Like she could finally bare her soul beyond the brawler, beyond even the explorer she kept at bay until she was done with her mission to protect Earth. Like an explosion in the cosmos that birthed a star and a new universe with it, she felt sparks all around the two of them, sparks ready to ignite something big.Something beautiful.And really hoped, and actually believed sometimes, that the woman devouring a fish like it was the last she would ever had in front of her, felt the same.Because for Yang, when Blake spoke, everything else muted, like they were deep in space, with only the void around them and their words as lights coming from stars.(Bumbleby Mecha AU)
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long, Jaune Arc/Pyrrha Nikos, Lie Ren/Nora Valkyrie, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Ruby Rose/Weiss Schnee
Comments: 21
Kudos: 71





	1. Chapter 1

The holographic alarm clock annoyingly beeps in front of her face. She can see it even when her eyes, sleep heavy, are still closed. Habit sometimes feels like it overrides your own brain and makes it do or see impossible things. Maybe scientists could be studying it more if they weren’t so busy trying to just keep Earth safe for another day.

Earth. When did it all become more complicated than just the imagination of life out there? When going to space was an act like those Indiano Joneses movie, all glorious and adventure like. Exploration was the key, and survival wasn’t on the line. It was all in name of science, of course, but only for those behind the monitors. For the ones in the cockpit was the sense of the unknown, the thrill of new views to be seen. To be as far away from home as possible and put your mark out there.

The cockpit now, was always at home. It had to be. Or there wouldn’t be a home to be.

All these thoughts went through Yang’s mind even before her eyelids fluttered open. With one sloppy hand gesture, she deactivated her alarm clock: 0500. It was still strange, after 5 years, to get used to certain military traditions. She never intended to join an army, after all. Too late for that, she guessed.

As she slowly sat on her bed, head pounding from a small celebration the day before with Pyrrha, Ren, Nora and Jaune – all fed by some of Ren’s most delicious cooking -, celebrating yet another successful defense mission, before she couldn’t even stretch her arms a high pitched, agitated voice filled her head.

“Yaaaaaaang! Aw man, you won’t believe it! Those cannons you normally use to shoot White Fang bots? Remember how the reload time was, oh my God so slow, those 5 miliseconds that annoyed me are poof, gone! I spent all night revamping the whole system and a few changes in the circuit-” Ruby, ever the genius, yet again hacked through Yang’s scroll to get instant access to her sister. She couldn’t even refuse the call if she wanted to.

“Ruby. Please. It’s five in the fucking morning. Couldn’t you possibly wait a few more hours to talk about… _miliseconds_? Really? I don’t think that it makes that much difference in real combat, sis.” She tried to sound annoyed, because she was, but the excitement in her sister’s voice was always a welcome distraction. Even if it probably was fueled purely by sugar. “Wait, _all night_? Ruby, you know that your working hours are during the _day_. Weiss is going to be pissed if you miss the first briefing at 7 a.m. Even if you _did improve five miliseconds_.” The laugh came together with an yawn as Yang got up and started her morning stretches.

Since joining the Earth Mecha Defense Force, she had to forfeit her  _very cool_ apartment downtown Vale. Now it was a regular bunker along all the others in the EMDF main camp. The pilots had an area just for them, closer to the docking bay, so they could always be near if action called. The rest of the forces were allowed to stay on camp or have their own residences, specially desk jobs. Ruby, along with most of the engineers, preferred the main camp residential since they were mostly geeks obsessed with their work. 

Yang tried her best do decorate her place: putting up her favourite band’s poster along the gray, metal walls. Her childish bumblebee carpet in front of her very uncomfortable bed and a pot of sunflowers, courtesy of her dads’s yard, beside her bed on the nightstand. Other than that, it was a pretty average place with a bed, a small kitchen area in case the pilot didn’t want to go to the cafeteria, a sofa, TV and a small bathroom. The essentials.

“I know sis, I know, but she **will** understand. Five miliseconds could be all you need to take down those pesky AI bots! Gosh, how many of them are out there? Every time, I swear, it seems there are more of them… And what’s up with those tactics, the way they are always retreating in random times...” Ruby continued talking over the speakers, slowly descending into one of her out loud rants. 

“Back to Earth, Rubes. You’re starting to ramble.” Yang went over her small fridge and took a bottle of water to drink a bit before getting dressed. “Just go take a few hours of sleep so you won’t fall asleep on the table, okay? Let’s all spare ourselves from the Ice Queen’s famous glare.”

“It was just _one time!_ And the table was fine!”

“That’s not really the point,” Yang chuckled. “Go to bed, Ruby. Don’t make me come over there. It doesn’t matter if you lock your door via hacking as long as I can punch it down.”

“Fiiiiiiine. I’ll go and have you humans ‘precious’ nap. Good night.” 

“And good morning to you, lil’ sis.” Yang waved away the call. Usually Ruby could keep it going by her hacking means, and when it actually went away it was because she allowed it. 

Yang looked in the mirror. She loved smashing bots. She loved the badge she would get after a fight, and the thought of being a protector of Earth. But she did wonder when would she be able to finally go exploring.

Like Summer did. 

Every battle was a bit the same of the last and they never learned anything new to what was happening. Or at least, nobody told them nothing different. How much more of the same fighting could she enjoy? 

She wondered when did the twinkle in her eye start to fade. 

-

At 6am you wouldn’t expect a bunch of 20’s something be up and having breakfast, but that’s how it was in the EMDF cafeteria. The pilots had to get up before most of the people, get up and ready for the briefing with the important people, report anything unusual in their mechs, discuss anything new they might have learned about the White Fang bot AI. 

Ever since the war started, 5 years ago, all they were met with was a bunch of automated robots that didn’t make much sense in their attacks. Everytime it was a different pattern, like they were always trying something new – but nothing hard enough that the EMDF couldn’t handle. The problem was they showed up  _ a lot _ and made everyone always busy, repatching mechs, refueling, training. The first attacks at the start of the war were the most impactful ones because no one was ready. Vale, the city they hit, took some time to recover – and in exchange, became the center of the EMDF, also thanks to the Schnee Company backing up the tech - mechs made mainly for exploring had to be salvaged into fighting machines. Now though, they were fully function war machines. As much as their tech advanced, they still didn’t know a thing about their attackers: just that one bot had, right in the beginning, “White Fang” scribbled very clearly at it’s side. Normal, human language. 

“Oh my Gooood, why do we keep waking up at this ungodly hour?” Nora said, hitting her head in the cafeteria table. Ren was at her side serving pancakes, a whole, huge stack of them. “Why can’t this robots have a schedule or something? Like, let’s attack Earth at 5pm! So everyone can actually _sleep_.” With her head still lying on the table she began cutting up pancakes.

“Well, if we didn’t celebrate every battle with, as you always say, _just a little of booze_ , then maybe getting up would be easier,” Pyrrha, always the voice of reason, said, as she elegantly ate her toast with blueberry jam.

Sitting in front of Nora, she looked a lot more presentable with her crisp EMDF uniform – the same as everyone else: a gray, unflattering jumpsuit with the EMDF logo stitched on the chest. The pilots had a little more liberty with it’s design and could choose a color for the big patch of colour on the side. Pyrrha’s had red as her hair, encouraged by Nora, who actually convinced Weiss and rest of the crew to make her’s a big ass pink heart on the back. 

“Come on Pyr, we have something to look for in the end of the day!” Yang strutted up to them with her tray of food, sitting besides Pyrrha. Her jumpsuist was even bolder: the sleeves were short, almost cut up (‘can’t keep the guns hidden’, she said to Weiss, who eyerolled so far it might’ve gone to the moon and back), and had flames coming up the back - Ruby came up with them, they said it would make her faster, as it supposedly did for cars.

“Okay, I get why you guys need to get up, but… yawn… what ‘bout me?” Jaune said, almost dozing off. He sat besides Pyrrha’s other side. He was already wearing his labcoat with a huge red cross on the back. As a doctor, he could wake up at a non-ungodly hour to go and work at EMDF’s medical center.

“Because you love and support me and, with our crazy schedules, breakfast is the most guaranteed way for us to eat a meal together,” Pyrrha said matter of factly, giving him a quick peck on the cheek. “Besides, of course, Nora’s crazy party every other night. But I actually don’t count it as good interaction time, since, you know… Absurdly loud music and everyone wasted?”

“Pyrrha, you know that you can actually drink and we don’t need a designated driver, right?” Yang looked at her. “We all commute by… walking. Like, a few meters between our rooms and the break room.”

“I just think we always need to be prepared, that’s all.”

“Come oooon, be prepared for what?” Nora finally lifted up her head to shower Pyrrha with her annoyed look. “It’s always the same – the bots come, shoot up a few building, which of course we already evacuated, we show up, they show up in bigger number but still no match for us truly and bam, we’re done. Repeating that a few more times a day and it’s over. Neon and Flynt are already growing cobwebs being our reserve pilots. I don’t even think they fit in their pilot suit anymore.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange though? How this all started. How it never ends and how it doesn’t make much… sense.” Yang put her fork beside her plate of eggs and bacon, looking to the side. Everyone at the table (Ren now included, after being done preparing everyone’s dishes) looked at each other. They knew how this went already. 

“Yang...” Pyrrha put a hand on the blonde’s shoulder. “Our job is to protect Earth. All the other complicated stuff is up to Weiss, Ironwood and Winter. We just need to focus on keeping the bots away and make sure they don’t hurt anyone.” 

Pyrrha looked up to Yang with a gentle smile. Their friendship went way back, since both of them dreamed of being mecha explorers, and she always had a way with dealing with the blonde – be it dealing with her tendency to get into fights or to rush into things she wanted the answer from. Yang wasn’t one to like being kept in the dark, for many reasons.

“Yeah… I know. I just,” Yang sighed, picking a forkful of bacon. “I just think there’s more. Like… they are just testing us for something. I don’t think their patterns are that random after all.” She filled her mouth with bacon as her mind filled with questions.

“You know, for someone I patched up a lot for all that dumb street fighting since school, your mind is pretty full.” Jaune said, with a dorky smile on his face. “Specially considering you are one of our top pilots.”

“Hey, don’t get me wrong – I love piloting and I love smashing bots like any other person out there,” Yang said, after swallowing a LOT of bacon. She pointed her empty fork at Jaune as she talked. “And, yeah, I love fighting. But… I love adventure. And fighting with a reason. And I just don’t think I’m really seeing a reason for all this.”

The table went silent as everyone ate their food. Despite trying to shut Yang’s doubt’s down, every one of them had their own piece of question they wanted answers for. And, as their scroll alarm started beeping, informing the pilots of their briefing, maybe today would be the day to quench those questions, or at least it was what Yang hoped everyday since Summer died.

-

“Good, everyone is here.” Weiss looked prim and proper in her white dress and jacket (‘I refuse to use one of these horrendous things’, she said, pointing at the EMDF jumpsuit and basically giving Yang good reason to customize her own). She sighed when her eyes met Ruby’s head hitting the table again. “Not _everyone_ , I guess. Ruby, please.”

“I’m up! I’m up!” She propped herself up, blinking her eyes quickly as if it would reboot her system faster. “Haha, you know how it is, the gravity in this room is so high you know? My head just, poof, hits the table everytime...” She said while scratching the back of her head with an awkward grim splattered across her face.

“Sis, you know we are not in space and gravity is the same around here, right?” Yang stage whispered to her sister, but barely being able to contain her grin as Weiss gave a show with another tremendous eyeroll.

“ _Anyway_ ,” The Ice Queen continued. “I’m here representing Father as the head of Schnee Company as he’s… busy” She bit her tongue a bit. Jacques Schnee wasn’t the most respectable man or ever cared about protecting Earth, just the liens that came with it. “And would like to begin this EMDF briefing. General, if you would.” 

The briefing room was a bit small, since there weren’t that many people to attend and it usually was classified stuff. They had the head of engineering, Ruby, General Ironwood and his assistant, Winter Schnee - the top dogs from the EMDF -, Jacques (or in this case, Weiss) Schnee representing their main science division and funders, the Schnee Company, along with the pilots. There was a table with holographic 3D displays at the center and everyone stood around it, watching as the data and information were displayed.

General Ironwood, in this prim white suit took a step foward, with a gloved hand behind his back and another gesturing to the holographic display and showing a 3D rendering of Earth. 

Despite being mainly a civilian effort, the EMDF had to oblige to some military rules to keep the order, as the General would say, and that included his very strict posture – something Yang couldn’t get used to. She joined when she was 18, expecting to go space exploring when it was still the Earth Mecha Exploration Divison (EMED), a branch of the Schnee company focused in outer space travel and exploration. She didn’t expect to join a war and  _ definetely _ didn’t want to behave like a soldier. 

“Our radars did their usual scan from Earth to Pluto, trying to detect any White Fang robot movement and predict their next attack,” _As always_ , Yang thought as the General spoke. They ways did the same scans at regular intervals and it would show robots approaching Earth. It usually took them about 2 hours to arrive and by then the pilot were all geared up and ready to counterattack. “But so far, no movement has been detected.”

That got Yang’s attention. She perked up from the wall she was and uncrossed her arms.

“That’s weird,” Nora spoke up first. “By now we should start seeing their first wave. Even if they don’t attack right away, we see them coming.” 

“We didn’t see robot movement. But we saw something else.” Ironwood, his face unchanging, gestured to the holographic table to show the readings from the scans. Empty space going across Mars, Saturn, Jupiter… Until.

“Wait.” Yang put her hands on the table, inching closer to the image. “Are those...”

“New bots. Yes. By our estimate they are times bigger than the usual robots that have been attacking us. About the size… of one of our mechs.”

The room went silent. It was the first change this war had seen in 5 years. All this time, the same routine, the same random interval attacks. The same briefings. Finally, something that could lead to… answers. All of that went through Yang’s mind as the new robots inched foward in the image. It looked like 3 mechs, not too similar to their own, but a lot more alike then the other robots they’ve been facing.

“They look almost...” Ruby began.

“Humanoid,” Yang completed.

“But it’s impossible. The Schnee Company has been making outer space explorations for years and we have yet to detect any other lifeform other than bacterias among our Solar System!” Weiss said, trying to hide her panic.

“Unless they’re hiding,” Pyrrha mused. She was great at keeping calm even in the most dire situations. “We never actually found out where the White Fang bots come from since ours mechs are always too busy defending the planet, even the ones in the reserve, and no other machine has the capability of outer space travel. Our scanners have limited capacity. We might just have not detected them.”

“But to hide a whole planet and life species? That’s insane! And why would they even do that?...” Nora questioned, looking around the room.

“We can’t jump to the conclusion that they are being piloted by something _alive_ just because they are humanoid. It could be another AI. The point is,” Winter spoke, louder than the other voices, trying to regain control of the room. Despite not being Ironwood level of intimidating, her icy demeanor and white army uniform still had their imposing force. “We have a new enemy approaching. Our estimate is the same as always, 2 hours. Along with the three big mechs, there seems to be at least 15 more with them. They are a lot smaller but seem to have the same design. We can’t underestimate them.”

Yang’s head was almost on fire. She was processing all the information and that was the problem, because as soon as she did, all the questions came flooded in. Summer mysterious death. The 5 years of battle with seemingly no purpose, their elusive enermy, never found among the stars at their reach, assumed to be nothing more than an incomprehensible somewhat inferior alien lifeform with nothing else to do. At last, the answers she desired seemed to be at her doorstep. She wasn’t going to keep the door shut.

“We need to get ready,” The blonde said, not as imposing as Winter, but much more determined. “Humanoid or not, we still have a job to do. We still have to protect Earth.” _And then, maybe I’ll finally figure out what the hell has been going on,_ she thought, just to herself. 

She wasn’t their “leader” for no reason (altough they didn’t really have ranks). Nora recomposed herself and Pyrrha just nodded, assured. Weiss was still trying to process all of this, to which Ruby responded with a tight side hug. They were usually reserved with their interactions, but that be damned. Earth had it’s biggest threat yet approaching.

“We don’t have any strategies for this new enermy, for we don’t know what they are capable of,” the General began. “So I trust you’ll do your best with your instincts. Dismissed.” 

Despite being the one to lead them, Yang stayed back, entranced by the vision of the humanoid robots. They had passed Jupiter by now. Something tug deep inside her. Like she was near the precipice and the fall was the only way out. 

She couldn’t wait to jump.

-

“We’re approaching Saturn,” A woman voice spoke over the communication channel. “Everyone still in position?”

A series of “yes, ma’am” were heard across the comms. 

“Good”, the deep, icy voice of a man spoke after them. “After several years of planning, we can finally take them out. For the sake of our race.”

Blake shivered. She knew that today was probably the most important day of her life, but she just had a feeling that maybe it would be for a different reason, one she didn’t know yet. 

That didn’t scare her, really. Not like those blue eyes did.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Easter!
> 
> Where I live we usually gift chocolate. But for you guys, here is more of my quarentine delirium.

“Refueling complete. How is everything up there?” Ruby voice sounded from the intercomm. “Ohhh, I can’t wait for you to test your cannon and finally see how those miliseconds-”

“Ruby! Focus.” Weiss’s shrills voice sounded alongside. “We’ve already checked with Pyrrha and Nora and their status is green. Flynt, Neon and Neptune are all on standby since we can’t fuel more than 3 mechs at once. How are you, Yang?” She asked, and Yang couldn’t help but notice the worry in her voice. Weiss Schnee was a proud woman, proud of all she accomplished while not even de facto in charge of her father’s company, proud that she was helping save Earth everyday. One thing she hated though, was how she had to send her best friends to fight everytime. She started learning to mask this specific worry, but this time, with a bigger threat, it came to drown her voice, and probably Weiss herself.

“I’m _fine_ , Ice Queen. All systems green, all that shenanigans.” Yang waved her off, even if the people on the control station could only hear her voice. “And don’t forget the miliseconds,” She chuckled. Still, hearing a loud sigh coming from Weiss – and not the usual ‘oh my god I’m sick of you guys – sigh, Yang put on a warm smile and hoped it transferred to her voice. “Weiss. It’s going to be okay. The numbers this time are way less than the usual robot AI. So what if they have a couple of big ones with them? We’ve been fighting for 5 years. Don’t worry.”

“Yeah! We’re gonna break. Their. Legs!” Nora’s scream invaded Yang’s intercom but was a welcome intrusion. The small laugh Weiss gave was enough to justify having her ears bleeding a little.

“Okay,” Weiss finally said, this time serious but a little more on the happy side. “Pilots Xiao Long, Nikos and Valkyrie, your mission, as always, is to protect our Earth – and come back in one piece. Are we clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Pyrrha, always the serious one, gave a firm affirmative.

“You got it!” Nora blasted, a little less louder this time.

“Leave it to us. And make sure to tell Ren to start preparing the after party!” Yang said, while looking around her cockpit. Even though she said that all system’s were okay, didn’t hurt to double check – she wasn’t the best pilot by simply being the best smasher (although that was part of it) she also paid a lot of attention to all the signs transmitted to her by Ember (her mecha’s name, ‘it’s important to name something you care about’ she could remember her mother saying while showcasing her own mecha years ago). 

It was a honor to be a pilot, mainly because it wasn’t easy being one. The mecha system designed by Schnee company was a revolution that allowed outerspace travel, seeing as it allowed for better interaction with the other planets environment as well as being safer than normal spaceships like rockets. The design also allowed that only one person had to pilot it, risking less of a crew (since their AI wasn’t nearly as advanced as White Fang bots that could travel a whole lot of planet’s distance without a single person in it). The problem was finding the pilot. Not everyone could handle the strain put on by the neurological connection required by the mecha. It was what allowed it to be so organic moving and minimized delay for the pilots inputs to the mecha actual movement. The Schnee company had yet to discover what made the pilots special for it, they just had the technology to know who was actually capable or not – things that they could be researching a lot more but that the war effort made them put on hold, since all they could do was keep their current mecha in shape for the daily fights.

Yang checked all the buttons, all the valves. She wasn’t really supposed to, but her cockpit seat was a little more personalized for her tastes: which obviously included more flame designs. Her battle outfit was a skintight suit in orange and yellow, matching the colour of her mecha platings. Pyrrha’s and Nora’s followed suit with the colours, red and pink respectively. All in all, the mecha was like a really hunky person in a big armour. All of them had the same stock plasma knife equipped, which was mostly used, but they also had personalized weapons that initially were different exploration tools but now transformed into real weaponry: Nora’s had a big hammer/grenade-launcher she wish could use more but required special type grenades, Pyrrha had a lance and shield (‘it’s important to have good offense and defense’ she lectured them) and Yang had her cannon/knuckles for both short and long distance fighting. 

“Going out for another battle, mom.” Yang whispered to the rose shaped badge stuck on the side of one of her monitors. “Wish me luck.” She gently touched the badge, a small ritual to give her good luck in the fight ahead. She had done it for the last 5 years and it had made her come back in one piece everytime. She hoped it would help today specially. 

“Prepare for launch!” Ruby shouted, and Yang braced herself. Closing her eyes, she awaited the high force impact that being launched a hundred meters from down the earth to the surface always brought up. It helped imagine Jaune in her place and how he probably would throw up at the first meters. 

Sunlight came into view and she scoped her surroundings. Nothing yet. They usually took a good one and a half hour to set everything up, from the pilots to the mechas, and that let them a few extra time to wait for the enemy. 

Yang nervously tapped her foot in the small cockpit. Her thoughts were racing a lot more than usual.  _Answers_ , she thought. Protect Earth, always. But today: answers. Answers could be coming to her.

“They breached atmosphere,” she heard her sister’s voice, this time a little more somber. An unusual tone for Ruby. Yang started tapping her foot with a little more force.

“Okay everyone, get in position. We’re going to try and keep a defense tactic like the ones we practiced,” The blonde began speaking over to her companions. She kept looking around waiting to see where they would land. “But be free to go with your instincts on this one. Nora, don’t worry about saving up those grenades. We might actually need to break their legs.” She smiled through her nervousness, feeling her bravado kick in. Head full of thoughts but hell, she was still _the best fucking pilot_ , and had always been a cocky one.

“Oooohh, I’m feeling you now, Xiao Long! Lets fucking do this!” Yang looked over and saw Nora already ignore the knife and going straight for the hammer on her back. 

“We have their landing point approximated. A few kilometers north of the city, thankfully a less populated area.” Weiss informed. “Move up there and… any minute now.”

Yang started walking, avoiding any buildings, as they were already accostumed to. The base was far away from the city but they couldn’t help to pass through a few smaller buildings and houses. Everyone was evacuated at this point but that wasn’t an excuse for destruction.

She breathed in. Breathed out. 

_Lets go._

As soon as they reached the designated point, before they could report back to command, a shockwave hit them. A huge cloud of dirt covered their vision and Yang quickly switched to a xray vision to see through it. Even through the refrigerated cockpit, a small drip of sweat fell through her face. 

Right in front of her, just like the scan showed, but even more real, more present.

Three huge mecha in position. The one in the middle had the helmet shaped like a bull. The one at it’s left looked to phase in and out of view, like it was trying to match the colours of it’s surrounding. And the one at it’s right had… cat ears?  _What a odd choice of design for supposedly an inferior lifeform with no purpose or reason_ , Yang thought. They could’ve just been more stylish versions of their own mechas but as the noon sun breached the clouds like a spotlight searching for the main actor, the plate on each of them reflected two words: “WHITE FANG”. No doubt. It was them. The enemy.

A few seconds later the lesser one’s started coming in, fifteen of them, just like the scan showed. 

All of them stood still. Yang remembered all those western movies her dad loved so much and made his girls watch everytime on father’s day. She always thought how stupid it was for the cowboys to stand still for so long, just facing each other.  _Why don’t they jump right away and attack each other?,_ she would ask.  _Well, imagine you’re up against someone, fighting for your life. And the other person feels the same. It makes sense to stop and just reflect a bit about it, doesn’t it?_ Her father would patiently explain to her. 

She didn’t get it. Not until now, as seconds passed, the clouds around them twisted and turned as the Earth was the only thing still moving around them. She should have already made the first move. Nora should already be launching grenades, but it was like some sort of force bigger than all of them – even their enemies – took over, and made them all reflect on this singular moment.

In a flash, a sword was inches away from her face. It took all those training years honing her reflexes to block the attack with her cannon arm. She couldn’t spare time to see it, but could hear Nora and Pyrrha each fighting their own enemies, by the clashing of heavy metal. She faced the cat, it seemed. 

After finally pushing her enemy back, she took a quick scan of the battlefield. The smaller mechas were providing support, firing away from a distance at each of them. They didn’t seem to have any close range weapons on them. The beams hit a few times but the Schnee plating was hard as nails. It didn’t dent a bit. But, as Yang looked down on her canon, she could see a small scratch that formed where the blade hit. It seemed the bigger ones were really more advanced – and deadly.

Around her, Nora seemed to be facing the bull and Pyrrha took on the shifting mecha. Their focus was intense on keeping their enemies at bay so the comms were silent. Or, at least Yang thought – some sort of stactic kept coming through, like a radio picking up a frequency but not quite all of it. 

“Urgh!” She didn’t have much more time to dwell on it as her enemy lounged again, with a series of well timed slashes. Up, down, diagonally. Even though Yang was fighting for her life, dodging each incoming cut, she couldn’t help but feel a little entranced by the way her opponent moved. It almost felt like they were… dancing. A deadly dance, for sure, but each cut and dodge felt like they complemented each other more than they opposed. It was a strange feeling to have when she was inches away from danger everytime.

When she used a well timed feint, a smile spread through her face and she connected a hard punch to her opponent’s side. The blade couldn’t quite reach the spot in time to block it so the mecha recoiled a bit as it was hit. Yang could finally breath and try to regain contact with her teammates.

“Everyone doing okay?!” she shouted over the intercomm, looking around with side glances.

“As… well… as… can be!” Nora pained words came through as she kept trying to hit the bull with her hammer but each time got sidestepped and hit with quick cuts from what looked like… a katana? Another odd choice of design.

“They keep disappearing…” Pyrrha looked around, dodging a cracking whip that hit the ground she was just stepping on. “Never saw this advanced tech in their normal bots!”

“Focus on the big ones for now! The smaller ones don’t seem to be able to hit us up close and their beam aren’t doing anything to our plates so far!” Yang commanded, and started loading her cannon. But that stactic… “Ruby,” She called out her sister. “I keep getting some stactic over here. Is something wrong with our comms?” 

“Not… exactly?” she heard could hear Ruby’s gears turning inside her head. “But there seems to be another signal coming through and it’s a little similar to ours. That’s why it’s interfering. I’ll try to decode it!”

“Right! I’ll just- Ack!” Before Yang could finish loading her canon, she felt the gravity abandon her as her enemy sweeped at her feet. The damage to the mecha didn’t transfer as pain but she _did_ feel the impact of her huge ass robot hitting the ground. The black cat mecha pinned her down as they just stood there. Again, she Yang felt something close to a spark. What _was_ happening? Why didn’t this feel like a fight?

Either way, it still  _was_ a fight, in every sense of the word. So before the blade could plunge directly into her head, she shot her now loaded canon behind her and used the impulse to get away from the other mecha. As she stood up and regained her balance, she started loading up the canon again. The enemy lunged foward with more fast slashes and they kept going at that rythm of side stepping and dodging, never really hitting each other. It was like a invisible barrier had formed and they reached some kind of sync in their hitting and dodging.

To her left, she heard a loud THUD and spared a quick glance to the side. Nora was on her back and the bull had it’s blade beaming, which didn’t look like a good sign. Yang judged the distance between her and the bull, and used the shot she was preparing against her opponet to propulse herself towards Nora’s direction. Yang had just the time to lift up her canon arm to block the beam from hitting her friend and felt a smashing wave of energy hit her, like trying to stop a tidal wave. She helplessly was engulfed by it, being launched several meters back.

“Yang? Yang, you okay?!” Nora came through to her. Thankfully, taking the hit gave the red head enough time to get some distance from that bull. 

“I’m… fine…” Yang rearranged herself on her seat. The impact nearlly knocked her off it. As she went to check down her systems it seemed her canon was completely offline. She looked down at her right arm and saw that the electronics were exposed. What the hell was that energy blast? “Fucking hell… Be careful with whatever that beam was! Ruby, any progress?!” She shouted over the intercomm, sensing her original enemy already approaching with another quick round of movements.

“Almost… There!” A satisfied Ruby sounded over the sound system. “We should be able to hear whatever it was interfering now!”

The stactic got louder for a second and then it seemed to cease. Yang was starting to get disappointed when a small sound starting coming through. She raised up the volume and it was… 

“Adam! We aren’t making much progress! Why aren’t you sending the other team in?!” 

A voice?

Not just a voice. A womans voice. A sweet, smooth voice. A voice that Yang wouldn’t mind to hear more. A voice she didn’t ever hear before but ringed to her ears like her favourite song would. 

A human voice.

“What?...” Was all the blonde could say. It surprised her so much she didn’t even notice the next slash coming, hitting her square in the torso. She grunted and beared it, stepping back a little. But she didn’t want to pursue this fight, which didn’t feel like a fight. She wanted to know where this voice was coming from and to who it belonged. Why did she imagine it would be to someone beautiful already? “Ruby, where is this coming from?!”

“I don’t know… I… Wait.” She could almost hear her sister furiously tapping buttons and smooshing her face in the monitors. “I’m pinpointing the signal… It’s from… the mech. The one… right in front of you.”

Completely stopped in her tracks, Yang lowered her fighting stance. Her enemy must’ve thought it was some sort of battle strategy because instead of attacking further, she stood on guard, preparing. 

“Can they hear me?” Yang asked.

“Not yet, they didn’t seem to notice that their signal was coming through to us. I’ll try to hack theirs and make a two way communication,” _Just like she usually does to call me_ , Yang thought lightly. Why did she feel so light even? “Done! Try… talking I guess?”

Okay, here goes nothing.

“Hey! Cat… thingy mecha! Can you hear me?” Yang spoke, almost to the void. But it seemed her enemy was listening, as they lowered the sword. Her comm must have reached the other two since they both stopped on their tracks. 

“Who…” The womans voice came through confused, almost in a cute way. Why was Yang smiling? “Why are you on our communications channel? What did you do?!”

“Blake! What the hell is happening?” A manly, rigid voice came sounding through. From the movement of the mecha around them, seemed to come from the bull one. The voice appeared to match the menace he displayed in combat. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Yang didn’t like at all the way he was talking to the woman. They seemed like partners but… What was this tense atmosphere?

“They… They breached our comunications channel!” She sounded almost… scared. Too tense. Too worried. ”I’m trying to disable it but they seem to have a goddamn good hacker on their side.”

“Wait, are we figthing… humans?” Pyrrha asked. Her enemy was now dispensing the camouflage but something what Pyrrha said must’ve grinded their gears because they began hitting their whip hardly on the ground.

“’ _Humans_ ’? How dare you compare us to your race!” Another womans voice came through, more raspy than the other. Probably from the whip user. 

“But we can understand each other. Why are we fighting?!” Yang asked, trying to approach the black cat mecha. “We never thought you would be… Not human, I guess, but another race that could talk to us. If we knew it we would have tried to talk first! Why send all of those AI robot all these years?” As she spoke, she felt her mind shattering, but in a good way – if it was possible. Just like she always waited for, the answers were coming. So there was some reason for the war all those years… If they could just understand each other…

“ _Because_ we already _tried_. And the results,” The bull started approaching her, sword at ready. “Were you _humans_ taking advantage of us! Don’t you remember? Or are you _too inferior_ for that?” 

What was he talking about? They never found another inteligent lifeform. Yang’s mind started reeling. Her team was quiet, including Ruby and Weiss. They all seemed to be equally surprised. The blonde felt a tense bubble forming around the battlefield – the small mechs stopped shooting and the six of them just stood there, staring at each other. But as the seconds passed, it felt like the pressure just kept growing and pushing them down. At any time, something would break. The bubble would pop. And there would be no way to stop.

Yang had to do something, had to  _understand_ . She couldn’t just keep fighting with no reason now.

“I don’t remember,” She answered, honestly. “But with we talked, we could just-”

“Enough!” The man, Adam, shouted. “We didn’t come here to negotiate. It’s time to do what we came here for.” He motioned his sword upwards and the lesser mecha, up in the air, stood in position. Yang looked at Nora and Pyrrha, all of them equally confused. As Adam motioned his sword down, the lesser mecha powered their thrusters and started flying at Yang’s team direction, divided in three groups, one for each one of them. 

“Look out!” She warned her teammates. The small mecha, in fact, had their own short range weapons. Yang watched concerned as their hands transformed into claws, seemingly from the same material as the blade the woman was using. She knew that thing could penetrate their plating if they hit enought times – and there were enough of them to do that. But she had another thing in mind. “Don’t hit them!” she shouted over to Nora and Pyrrha.

“What? Are you crazy?” Nora shouted back, almost gasping as she avoided one, two, three small mechas clawing at her face. 

“She’s right!” Pyrrha started talking, even her sounding tense. “If there’s… people, inside those bigger mechas, there could be people inside these small ones too! We have to disable them without destroying it!”

“It’s really fucking hard to do that when there’s…” Nora panted. “So freaking many!”

She was right, and Yang knew it. They could keep dodging, but to stop them without doing too much of a damage would require precision they weren’t exactly given enough time to have it. And even dodging, they would run out of fuel eventually. 

Something was wrong, though. They were overpowered by the small mechas, specially since they were just dodging, but the bigger ones were just standing away from them. Almost… watching? This would be a great opportunity to attack, right?

“Adam, shouldn’t we go now?” That sweet voice again. And by her tone, she was as confused as Yang.

“No,” A rasp, almost annoyed sounding answer. “ _Now_ it’s time for our plan.” He sounded too smug. Yang already hated it.

But, as she dodged yet another claw, something strange happened. She heard a scream, from a voice she couldn’t recognize. It sounded like their intercomm was now synching with the small mecha network as well, and she started hearing their voices – but all was overlapped by this blood curling scream. She looked back at the bull and saw he had pressed some sort of button on his right arm. 

Another scream. But this time was Nora’s.

The lesser mecha that surrounded her were dispersing, except one, which started contorting itself. She tried to get away but it’s claw had lodged itself on her leg. 

Yang, for some reason, started remembering physics’s class she had to take during the pilot training. She hated those, snored through much of them and just robbed Pyrrha’s answers most of the time. But something brought it all back, gravity bombs? How a tin can contorted into itself and then…

“NORA!” 

It was too late. The small mecha reached the apex of it’s contortion and with a huge blast exploded into pieces. Nora’s mecha fell flat onto the ground, it’s left leg missing. Her communication channel was dead. 

The other small mecha stopped with their attacks, petrified. It seemed they weren’t quite as into the plan as it seemed.

“Adam… what did you do...” The woman asked. Her voice sounded almost like she was about to cry and that didn’t sit well with Yang.

“I _did_ what needed to be done.” He moved his arm to press more buttons. “And I’ll keep doing it till we reach our goals.” 

“This was not how we planned!” She continued, but he seemed to ignore. 

The lesser mecha, now aware of what was going to happen to them, seemed to try to scramble for their lives. But they were dragged by something, almost controlled… by their claws. What seemed to be their secret weapon was also the way the bull was controlling them and throwing them around, in Yang’s and Pyrrha’s direction. It seems he planned that they wouldn’t want to stick around for what was coming for them.

“Yang! What do we do?” Pyrrha while dodging being impaled by claws all around her. 

The blonde was also dodging, almost on autopilot. Her mind was still thinking about that scream. She had to do something about it. She had to. She was still their somewhat leader. 

“You take Nora away from here, she is a sitting duck as she is. And Ruby,” She said, while dodging a pair of claws and shutting down the comms from the lesser mecha, all filled with screams and pleads for their lives. “Please lil sis, you have to think of something to help them!”

“I… I… Okay. Okay,” Ruby’s tapping noise on the keyboard was furious and loud enough to be heard. “I’m replaying the explosion… It seems that the bomb is remote controlled. Maybe I can try and reverse engineer the signal that sends that explosion and deactivate them remotely!” 

“Great! Great!” Yang gasped, slightly more relieved. “How long is it going to take?”

“Uh… normally? A few hours. But!” She continued before Yang could interject. “I’ll try to do as fast as I can. For now, just try not to be hit. And don’t engage them! It will activate the bomb as well!”

“Easier said than done...” The blonde replied as a claw barely scraped her arm. 

As she kept avoiding them the best she could, Yang saw Pyrrha move Nora’s bot away from the battlefield. When she almost seemed safe enough, she saw the disappearing whip mecha rush in her direction. 

“Oh no you don’t!” Ducking while a mecha passed through her head, Yang put herself between Pyrrha and the woman. 

“Get away, inferior race. You won’t be able to stop our plan.” The way she said that, Yang could almost catch… regret?

“Your plan is to kill your own? What kind of sick fuck plan is that?”

“It’s _a necessary sacrifice_ to get what we need to _survive_! You wouldn’t understand that!” The whip cracked at Yang’s feet. 

“If you guys could just stop trying to blow us up with you, I _could_ understand!” The whip cracking almost hit her this time. The conversation was start to reach the boiling point.

“Try telling this to the ones you murdered! Like my _parents_!” She disappeared, and Yang could only hear a faint movement in the wind that helped her dodge the whip inches away from her face. Her _parents_? What was she saying? 

As if it wasn’t enough, the small mecha were still circling around them. But just as they seemed to try and lunge at them, they would go the other way. As if someone was trying to stop it.

“Adam, please!” As she got closer to the other two, their comm came back up. She heard the woman, Blake, plead. “Ilia is there too! You’re going to hit her! Stop this madness!”

“Why can’t you understand that I’m just trying to do what’s best for us _?_ For the _faunus_?” His voice sounded more like a grunt, like they were struggling. 

It seemed to distract the other woman, Ilia, as well, so Yang took the opportunity to tackle her to the ground. As she lifted her head up, she saw Blake trying to pin Adam’s arm’s up so he couldn’t push any more buttons. 

Ilia started to struggle under Yang, until she suddenly stopped, almost scared, looking up. But not at Yang, at something else. As Yang turned around, she saw another mecha contorting itself. Before it could blow everything up, she took Ilia with her just far enough to avoid the explosion. 

“What did you do?!” Blake questioned.

“This time it wasn’t me!” Adam answered, still struggling with his partner.

“Enough with this delay, pilot Xiao Long.” A icy man’s voice came through her intercomm. “Just when I think it’s enough to let my daughter in charge, she just stands here – useless. Like a child,” The man sighed. “It seems _I_ still need to be the one to take care of things. How are our lasers, General?”

“Ready to fire in a few seconds,” Ironwood’s voice came through. He usually just oversaw the operations, with Ruby and Weiss in charge at the command center. If he was involved…

“Jacques,” Yang growled, like a caged beast. “What the fuck did you do? There’s _people_ inside those!”

“ _People_ who are trying to kill us, pilot Xiao Long. Did you not understand that when one of them _blew up one of our mechas whole leg_? Your _friend’s_ leg?” He sounded like the snake he was. 

“Ruby is trying to reverse engineer their signal! She’s going to remoetely deactivate the bomb with no casualties!” She shouted, hating how constricted it felt, being under the hands of this kind of man. She could forget about him when Weiss was in charge, but everytime he stepped on the scene she remembered that it was _for him_ that she worked. As much as she would like to rebel against.

“Your _sister_ is taking too long,” He continued. Yang could hear that smug smile on his face and couldn’t count how many times she wished she could’ve punched his clean white teeth off. “And I don’t know if you noticed, but your fuel is starting to get low.” Fuck. He was right. With the heat of the situation she forgot to check her fuel tank. She was already below half. Their battles usually didn’t take this long. “So I had to come down here and do something _actually useful._ So, please just back away from those enemies. We wouldn’t another mecha heavily damaged.” And with that he cut off the comm.

He didn’t even care for her life, just his precious property. 

“Fuck!” She slammed her fist on the control panel. In the bigger scope, he was right. To protect Earth, this was the right thing to do. But why didn’t it feel right? 

Was she supposed to  _only_ protect Earth? What about what was out there? Shouldn’t she protect them too?

_What would her mother do_ ?

Looking at the rose badge, she made a decision. 

“Ilia, is that it?” She spoke to the mecha she had a grip on. “I know you really want to fucking destroy me right now but those mechas, _your people_ , are going to get killed without even a scrap on me if we don’t take down the lasers.” Big breath. Hold, release. Keep going, Xiao Long. “The lasers are all around the city. They take some time to recharge. Are you with me?”

“I… Wait, I don’t-” 

“Are you with me?!” 

“… Right. After this, I’ll fucking kill you.” 

“I don’t like you much either.” 

With that, Yang pulled Ilia’s mecha up to her feet and scouted the surrounding lasers. The only ones in range were about 10. They could split half to each. She just hoped her fuel would be enough to hold up.

“You take the left side,” Yang pointed at the row of lasers. “Go!”

The mechas around them were still going crazy with Adam and Blake struggling a few meters from them. Every time one got close enough to Yang it swerved the other way. One, two lasers down. Before they could fire up she was slashing them down with her knife. Ilia went around with her whip and hit them from a distance. They were making a good time.

“What the fuck are you doing pilot Xia-” Jacques voice starting grinding on her ears. “Yang!” Ruby’s voice surprised her just a she slashed another laser down. “I’m almost done with the deactivate button!” She sounded like she was pushing Jacques away from the intercomm button. “Just hold out a little more!”

“You got it!” Slash, up, down. Two left on her side, one on Ilia’s side. Slash. One to go. She was almost done. She was almost-

“Oops.” A cracking whip hit the last one Yang was supposed to hit. “Got here first.” And then she felt the whip hit her back. What she didn’t expect was the electric shock that came with it, making her fall down to her knees and then to the ground.

“I...Ilia…” The shock carried all the way through the cockpit and hit Yang herself.

“I said that I was going to kill you. I don’t understand what part of it you didn’t get.” She was closing in. 

As the shock effect passed, Yang tried to move. A glaring red warning sign flashed through her screen.

‘LOW FUEL’

Her arms and legs felt heavy. The rose badge glistened, almost staring back at her. Was she wrong in her judgement? Wasn’t she capable of protecting every life out there?

A large thud sounded behind Ilia and made her turn her back. Blake was finally on the ground and Adam regained control of the small mechas. The lasers were down. Nothing could stop the rest of their plan. Ruby’s deactivation button still wasn’t ready. Adam was getting ready to sent the whole rest of the mechas in Yang’s direction as Ilia went back to his side. 

Something froze him, though. Something froze all of them.

One of the mechas going her direction suddenly stopped moving. At it’s top, the cockpit capsule emerged, and a  _person_ came out of it. Apparently whomever was inside the mecha finally worked an overrired and managed to activate some sort of emergency escape. A blonde muscular man was trying to climb out of it.

“SUN!” Blake’s voice came exploding through the intercom as she lounged herself towards the immobile mecha. Her huge robot hands splayed themselves open for the man to jump on. She put him on her back and apparently he got inside her own cockpit. 

Before she could sigh in relief, his mecha, devoid of a pilot, started contorting itself.

It was going to blow up.

“BLAKE, GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM THERE!” Adams voice attacked her, seeing what was going to happen.

The low fuel sign kept flashing in front of Yang’s eyes but all she could see was that person she wanted so bad to meet, the answers she was looking for, about to disappear in front of her eyes. And she wouldn’t even be able to introduce herself.

She quickly pressed buttons, redirecting all the remaining fuel and energy to her feet, and leaped towards the woman named Blake.

_Blake_ .  _What a beautiful name_ , she thought, as all went white.

-

A flood of images, coming through. 

Somebody screamed. Was it her? Had she time to scream? The pain came, but she soon found herself too weak to keep screaming. 

She heard metal being pryed open and then the harsh light of the sun invaded her closed eyelids. 

“Is she okay?!” A male voice, but it wasn’t harsh. Maybe somewhere faraway it would be playful, but now it was filled with heavy worry. “God, there’s a piece of metal piercing, there’s too much blood-”

“I don’t know, Sun!” That voice again. Blake. Her closed eyes, her body screaming with pain and burns, it all seemed to fade away as she heard it. Why? Why did it soothe so much? She felt something soft on her face, on her neck. Someone was checking her pulse. “She’s alive… but I don’t know… I...” 

“We have to get her out of here.” 

“What about… what about Adam?” That fear again in her voice. If she could only just chase the fear away…

“He ran. With Ilia and the others. Apparently the rest of the bombs wouldn’t go off, but he dragged all of them with him either way. That bastard...” Good, he hated that asshole too. “And it seems other mechas are coming for us… They should be here soon. Blake...”

“I know, Sun. But we’re here now,” For some reason, her hand didn’t leave Yang’s face. Like if it left, Yang’s life would leave with it. “We… Have to trust they’ll understand. They...” And for some reason, Yang felt like the words were being directed at her. “They seem to want to understand us.”

“Then let’s get her out of here. Maybe if we show we helped her they won’t try to k-” the voices started fading as the pain grew. It radiated from her abdomen with a sharp pang and burns all around. It started muting very other sound and sensation – the last to go away was the warm, soft feeling of Blake’s hand on her face.

-

“Adam. What are we going to do now?” Ilia sounded worried as they flew away from Earth, but not as much as she felt. She fighted to hide deep inside how desesperate she actually was. Fear was not an emotion that would be accepted by _him_ right now.

“We need to bring a bigger force with us. We understimated the humans.” His voice, despite trying to maintain itself impassive, trembled with anger.

“But what about Bla-”

“She’s a traitor. A fucking traitor. She refused to come back with us and she will pay dearly for that.” The anger grew. It started showing itself more like the glistening of a monster’s fangs. 

“They won’t help us if they hear from the others-”

“They won’t hear anything.” He pressed all the buttons with a forceful slap. Behind then, the space lit in silent explosions. A funeral with no requiem to be heard. “Our mission was compromised by Blake, the traitor. That’s all the faunus need to know.” 

“… Right. For the good of our race.” Ilia said, but the words stayed bitter in her mouth.

“For the good of our race.” He didn’t look back and just swatted away a piece of scrap that came floating at his face, a scribbled “White Fang” on it, flying towards the empty void.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Adam is an asshole. Will I redeem Ilia? Lot's of questions, but the most important of all - will I keep writing?  
> Well, I hope so.
> 
> (This chapter was written without listening to music, but actually besides my mom as she watched that new Power Ranger Movie and commented how silly it was)


	3. Chapter 3

An unfamiliar ceiling.

Her body seemed to use all it’s strength just to push her eyelids open and the first thought she had was how unfamiliar and cold the white and bright ceiling was. Despite all the confusion and the voices that seemed to overload Yang’s senses (‘she’s awake!’, ‘Call Jaune quickly,” and “thank God, I wouldn’t know what to do-’), how heavy and powerless she felt, the mind numbing medications probably surfing through her veins and trying to maintain control of her pain, through all that.

The warm touch on her face. The delicate, slender fingers, desesparetely searching for a pulse, a sign of life. It was what she missed the most and what made waking without it a much bigger effort.

“Yang?...” She focused, and a blurry silloute of a person soon took the shape of her sister. Her brain was starting to connect the voice to where it was coming from. Ruby. Ruby was by her side, her hand outstretched and hesitating to touch her – as if she got any closer, Yang might break, disappear before her eyes.

She probably thought Yang already had when the explosion went off.

_The explosion_ , she thought. It started coming back to her. She tried getting up but felt as if an invisible force pushed her down – as if she was in one of the gravity chambers from her training. A dull, pulsating pain coming from her left side. She couldn’t bear to look down, thinking that if even with her mind numbed with medication the pain was this bad, the damage to her body must’ve been a whole lot.

“Don’t push yourself,” Ruby said, gently. As her vision ajusted, she could see her sister, still in her engineer uniform, sitting besides her. She had a gentle, but sad smile. Like she had so much sadness in her before that the relief and happiness had yet to set in. “Weiss went to call Jaune. He’s going to come see you in a bit.”

“What...” She tried speaking, but the voice that came out didn’t sound much like hers. It was rough, raspy, like someone trying to blow a flute full of dust. The respirator on her face didn’t help much to convey her words. “How…” She couldn’t quite gesture to herself, but saw understanding on her sister’s eyes.

“You… you got hit pretty badly, in that gravity bomb.” Ruby said, biting her lips. It didn’t seem fair to make her sister remember that, Yang thought, but she had to know. Had to settle herself. “Even with the plating, you saw what that thing did to Nora’s Magnhild-”

“Nora.” Yang tried to interject more loudly, only to end coughing up a little. Ruby quickly fetched a cup of water and a straw and lifted up the respirator so she could give her sister a drink. Yang lazily slurped the straw, not even half the cup, before abandoning it. Ruby took the cue and set the glass back on the bedside table and put her breathing machine in place.

“She’s fine,” and Yang sighed in relief. “It was smart for you to make Pyrrha get her out of there. The explosion didn’t really affect her but it had cut down the power lines in her mecha. She wouldn’t be able to get out of there herself.” Ruby smiled, a hint of pride in it. “You did good, sis.”

_I did good,_ she thought, humorlessly. If she did better she wouldn’t be in this bed right now.

“But to you… The position that your mecha was when you pushed the... cat one, out of the way, it hit you straight up in the face.” Ruby fidgeted with her fingers, as she usually did when she got nervous. “Jaune can probably explain better what happened to you though but… I’m just glad you’re awake.” And Ruby finally breached the gap and went to hold Yang’s hand. The blonde didn’t have much strength in her, but gave the best squeeze she could.

And then she remembered.

“Ruby, those people-” she spoke, her voice slowly starting to reform itself again.

“Well-”

Her sister began only to be interrupted by Jaune entering the room. He had some papers with him and looked tired. Not that badly tired, but the same look he used to give Yang when he had to patch her up after she got beat up trying to do something reckless. That gave her a little more hope to how bad she actually was.

“We need to stop meeting like this,” He joked, but gave a long sigh, looking over his papers and then to Yang. “You’re a lucky bastard, you know that? God knows what could have happened to you in that explosion. Maybe try thinking a little bit next time?” The usual Jaune rant. Yang chuckled, though it came out strained.

“So it’s probably not that bad?” She asked, lightly, but still concerned.

“Other than that a huge piece of metal pierced your abdomen and barely managed to avoid any internal organs, _and_ some light burns on your arms,” Jaune went to stand by her side, trying the best to look mad. He couldn’t avoid the goofball inside of him though, and a small smile came through. “Yeah. It’s not _that bad_.” 

“Thanks, doc.”

“Don’t thank me. You should be thanking the people that got you out of there.” He said, and Yang didn’t miss the nervous look Ruby had. “It might’ve missed your organs but God did you lose blood-” He started rambling but stopped himself. “I’ll... spare you of the details. We stitched you up pretty good and thanks to all that high tech medicine the Schnee Company developed, you’ll be good as new in a few weeks. For the next 3 days though, I would _really_ appreciate if you stayed in bed. Like, seriously Yang. I know you usually ignore me about this things but… You got lucky, a _lot_. Don’t waste it trying to be reckless again.”

“You know me so well,” She tried laughing again. Good, it wasn’t sounding so much like a lung cancer patient anymore. “I’ll try to be good doc.”

“… God, I never know what to do with you.” He sighed again, but his smile was still there. “I gotta go see Nora now, just to check if she didn’t have any recoil from the neurological connection forced cut. I’m gonna allow more visitors a sec but… Weiss want to talk to you first.” He looked at Ruby and nodded. “You both.”

And just like that Jaune left the room, excusing himself as he passed by Weiss, already at the door, who didn’t waste any time and marched inside. She stood by Ruby’s side and gave her a small pat on the shoulder.

The moment seem to stretch for an eternity, at least for Yang. It could be the influence of the pain meds she was on, but the seconds seem to slowly slug themselves as Weiss and Ruby just stood there. Yang, as well. With her being given the okay by Jaune, the other biggest concern they had was looming over their heads and no one had the courage to breach it. Yang blamed that to her slow brain at the moment.

But no amount of silence could change what happened. What was happening.

That they entered in contact with a new race. A new species, from outer space. Something they had never found before. Or at least, it was what they thought.

As Yang’s brain started reeling back the memories from the fight, also came what she heard from the other mecha pilots. How they were betrayed by humans in the past. How they had already tried understanding and the war they faced for the last five years resulted from these failures in their past. A past none of them knew about.

Weiss took a big breath and seemed to be the one to finally gain enough courage to speak.

“My father is pissed, you know,” She started. “You destroyed some really expensive lasers.” A lighter topic. From a girl who was raised to not care about others, her delicacy in dealing with people’s emotion and the mood was pretty good.

“He knew how I was when he hired me.” Yang rebuked, smirking a bit. “I’m not that good following orders. Especially really fucking dumb ones.” Her smirk stayed but her anger started flaring. Ruby could sense it and gave her hand another hard squeeze. Yang couldn’t tell her that it was hurting the burns she had and just endured. “But Jacques Schnee being pissed is the least of my concerns right now. Weiss,” The blue eyed girl flinched a little from Yang’s somber tone. “Are they okay?”

The Ice Queen visibly relaxed, as that probably wasn’t the question she was expecting, but, at the same time, she felt like that was obviously what kind of thing a person like Yang would do. 

“Yes. They were the ones who took you out of Ember and brought you to us,” She said. “They surrendered and are in our custody. My sister and the General are trying to interrogate them right now. Fortunately those people you saved have some sort of translator device with them that makes them be able to comunicate in our language without problem.” That’s how they could understand each other during the fight. The thought didn’t even cross her mind in the heat of the moment.

“Trying? I can’t imagine your sister being satisfied with _not succeeding_.”

“They aren’t allowed to use force,” Weiss explained. “Since they surrendered peacefully. And, most importantly, saved you. No one can see any reason to try and force anything out of them, despite my father demands.” She bit her lip.

“Good to know your father can’t ruin _everything_ around here.” Yang couldn’t hold her anger as Jacques’s words to her during the last battle started coming back to her. How quickly he discarded her life in favor of his property.

“The General did what my father ordered because Earth was being treatened,” Weiss felt Yang’s anger rising even more and tried to bring a more calmer tone, her eyes soft. “But he isn’t a complete madman. If he doesn’t see a direct threat, he sees no need for violence. But...” She stopped herself, looking back to Ruby. Something was up.

“But?...” Yang questioned, as she tried to help herself a little up the bed. Pain. Lots of pain. Maybe later.

“But… As Weiss said, they are _trying_. And not exactly having any results. The two that stayed aren’t answering anything.” Ruby said, fidgeting a bit more on her seat. “They have… one condition. Actually, one of them has. To talk.”

“Well? What is it?” Yang asked. She was getting impatient just thinking about how much they could start learning about what was out there. The explorer inside her was resurfacing.

“They want to talk _to you_.” Weiss said, matter of factly. “Actually, _she_ wants to talk to you. The woman.”

“Blake?” Yang said and the name simply came naturally to her, it almost scared her how much so.

“Is that her name?” Weiss looked at Yang curiously, like she had a thought but filed it to think about later. “Well, you are already making more progress than Ironwood and Winter. Yes, _Blake_ will talk but only if it’s with you. The man with her just went along and isn’t saying anything.” 

“Did… Did she say why?” The blonde felt her heart do tricks inside her chest, as much as it could while being slowed down by all the medication in her system. Her mind tried not to dwell that much on it.

“She wants to talk to people who ‘want to _understand’_.” Ruby said, almost like repeating a line she heard many times. “It’s all she said. So… We were waiting for you to wake up. I know you aren’t one hundred percent yourself right now, but the General is a little bit short on his patience – despite what Weiss said about him, well… You know how those military types are.” Her sister said quickly, not being equally fond of how the military operated things around the EMDF. It hit close to home for Ruby especially because she loved doing experiments, and those experiments happened to blow up a lot and make a mess of things – which Ironwood and Winter couldn’t really take it. “But we’ll understand if you-”

“Send them in,” Yang answered, without hesitation. The thumping in her heart got louder, loud enough that it supressed the sound coming from her heart rate monitor, ironically. 

She just didn’t know if it was just the anticipation for answers anymore.

-

Yang didn’t expect it to be so normal.

The man, Sun, and Blake entered her hospital room, both handcuffed and accompanied by two EMDF guards, General Ironwood and Winter Schnee right behind them.  They were wearing what Yang supposed was their piloting suit, a skin tight kind of clothing that went from the neck down to their feet. Sun’s was white and red and had White Fang written on the back and arms, but Blake’s was something else.

Yang couldn’t help but stare a little as the black and purple skinsuit molded itself to the other woman’s body. It gave her a sense of danger and importance, somehow.

She tried to blame the sensation of normalcy to her muddled brain, but as the pain in her abdomen increased she could feel the effect of the analgesics fading. She was more herself now and everything that came together was hers.

Including her heart, ever the idiot, skipping a beat or two when her eyes met amber. Blake looked like she stared right into Yang’s soul. Melted gold and lavender, stared at each other for what it seemed like an eternity. How normal it felt to meet another person’s eye – she didn’t felt like she were meeting another race. Someone from a planet far, far away from her.

She was just meeting a beautiful woman.

Their locked eyes finally broke contact when the General coughed a little, trying to get the attention of the room.

“Well, you’re with her. Speak,” He said, curtly, with his hands behind his back. Yang knew that’s where he kept his pistols.

“I won’t tell anything to you people.” Blake spoke, with the ferocity of a predator. Despite the position she was in, she didn’t act like a prey. Why did Yang think so much of animal’s comparisons-

Oh.  _Oh._

Their whole appearence was so  _normal_ that Yang took a while to notice, and finally absorve the idea that she was in fact meeting another race. Perking atop of Blake’s head were a pair of black cat ears – Yang couldn’t think of any other way to describe them. She didn’t even know if they were in fact cat ears, or some sort of other alien appendage, but the way they move around to any sound in the room and how fluffy they looked… She felt the urge to pet her.

She would probably lose her hand, she imagined.

Behind Sun, something golden and furry swished around. It looked like a… tail? It reminded her of the monkey’s she would see at the Vale Zoo when Ruby dragged her. But again, she could just presume – it could be other thing else entirely.

Her bewilderment was finally broken by General Ironwood’s temper rising. He paced around the room until he was in front of the two strangers. His hand’s inched closer to his pistols.  _Not a madman my ass,_ Yang thought.

“You _said_ you wanted to talk with pilot Xiao Long. You didn’t say we weren’t allowed. And why would we give you people any reason to stay here, with one of our injured, without supervision?” He asked, almost spitting out the words. 

“Because without _us,_ she wouldn’t even be here.” Blake responded matter of factly. To that, the General was disarmed. She really had a point. He just wanted an excuse to do something the _soldier_ way, but couldn’t find it. 

With a huge sigh, he put his gloved hand on his temple, massaging it.

“… Fine. We will give you some… _privacy_.” The words felt like they hurt him on the inside. “But we’ll be posted right outside, so if you try anything-”

“With these handcuffs? Kinda hard to do that, pal,” Sun answered lifting his handcuffed hands, a lot more aloof than the situation he was in. 

The Schnee Company had developed tools in case they ever found other races or inteligent lifeforms that didn’t quite… respond peacefully. This included beam powered handcuffs that required a specific passcode and fingerprints to disable, being basically impossible to break or lockpick. 

“Urgh.” Ironwood grunted, and opened the door to the room, having his man and Winter leave first. Before he could exit, he turned to Yang, eyes narrowed. “I just hope you didn’t doom us all, pilot Xiao Long.” And with that, he slammed the door behind him. No more footsteps followed, so they were really just outside the door. Luckily, all hospital rooms were soundproof to offer more comfort to patients.

“Wow, he needs some vacation like, ASAP.” Sun quickly layed on the couch to the left of Yang’s bed, putting his feet up. His tail swished around everywhere as he scanned the room. “And what is with this depressing atmosphere? How can they expect people to get any better here?” 

“Sun!” Blake, on the other hand, was much more reserved. She kept a distance from Yang, despite being the one to demand to talk to her. She had her ears pinned up in attention. All of her posture said she wasn’t even as much as ease as her partner, her spine rigid and her eyes fierce. It was like looking at gold melting, a very high temperature emanating from her stare. Yang would be lying if she didn’t melt a bit too. “Remember where we are and watch yourself.”

“What, with the person who actually _saved_ our lives?” Sun got up and a sat more erect on the couch. “Yeah we saved her but that was mainly to make sure they didn’t shoot us on sight.” And then he turned to Yang. “Dude, you were fucking awesome. Jumping right into an explosion like that. I… “ His face turned into something more serious. “I can’t really thank you enough. If it weren’t for you… Hell, I still can’t get those screams out of my mind. Adam, that fucking bastard...”

“Adam,” Yang finally said. She didn’t miss how Blake flinched hearing his name. “Is he your leader?”

“… In a manner, yes.” Blake began talking. She didn’t seem comfortable at all with the topic and the way her eyes moved was like she was physically looking for an exit away from talking about it. “But I think we should start at the beginning. You said you wanted to understand us.” She took a step foward towards Yang, trying to look determined. But her hands, she couldn’t hide how they shaked a little. It seemed her predator persona was starting to fade. 

“Yes,” Yang said with no hesitation in her voice. She took the respirator off, seeing no more need for it. Jaune probably forgot to remove it, with Weiss pressuring him to be as quick as possible. She took a clean, deep breath and lifted herself up a little on the bed. She couldn’t hide the grunt of pain as her abdomen pulled deep inside her pleading for her to stop moving. But she couldn’t talk with them lying like a vegetable on the bed. Her eyes went towards Sun, who was really listening and serious now, but fled to Blake’s and stayed there. “I’ve been fighting this war for five years. It’s been five years of facing White Fang robots every day with not a single clue to why. It might’ve been enough for the military people around here to just defeat the enemy, but I’ve wanted answers since the beginning. I want to know why we’re risking our lives out there… And why you were trying to destroy us.” Her voice trembled a bit. “We thought we were fighting emotionless AI for all these years and never expected to there be… Well, _life_ behind it. I didn’t join this war just to fight, but to protect life.” Lavender eyes burned through amber and she hoped her feelings got across her words. “ _Every_ life.”

Blake and Sun stayed quiet for some time, pondering what to say. Sun clearly wasn’t the thinking type, so he didn’t even try, waiting for Blake to take the initiative. His tail stopped moving around so much as to reflect his pensative state. And Blake kept her stare firm to Yang’s, probably trying to read clearly the emotions behind her words, trying to sense any trickery in it. When it finally felt like she found none, her shoulders relaxed just a little and her eyes softnened. 

“Our race is called _faunus_.” She began, her smooth voice like she was telling a child a tale as old as time. “As you can see, we are like humans in almost every way – except that every one of us has some animal trait, along with a more acute vision in the dark.” So Yang wasn’t mistaken, those were _really_ cat ears on top of her head. “We come from a planet close to Pluto called Menagerie. There’s a small star near to it, not as big as your Sun, and it’s conditions are somewhat close to your Earth, atmosphere and gravity.”

“So why-” 

“It isn’t all great there.” Blake looked down, tired. Like she was bringing up unpleasant memories. “We’re constantly hit by solar flares and most of our planet’s soil isn’t fertile. Two-thirds of it is a huge wasteland with dangerous creatures you humans probably can’t even imagine. Life has been… hard. Since the beginning. And it’s only gotten worse. We don’t know how longer we can maintain life there without having to resort to...” She couldn’t bring herself to say it, but Yang could imagine what it was.

“But why attack us? For all these years, without a single message? If you’re so much alike, why didn’t you try to come to peace and ask for help?”

“We tried before.” And then Yang saw a look on Blake’s face that didn’t match her beautiful features: anger. “A few decades ago, a group of faunus came to Earth, the only planet we found with an inteligent life form. We _tried_ to ask for help. To reach understanding.” Blake bit her lip like she was holding back tears. “Almost none came back. The ones who came, couldn’t even speak of all the things _your people_ did to them.”

“Blake, but your parents-” Sun got up the couch, extending his cuffed hands towards the woman.

“They were wrong, Sun!” Her words came out harsh, bitter. But not all the way. There was some hesitancy backing them. “They… They said they met humans, good humans, who tried to help them. But what about all the other faunus who died in cages? Did anyone try to understand _them_?”

As Blake scrubbed the tears of her face with the back of her cuffed hands, Yang began to see the real picture. Began to understand why she struggled against Adam, why she tried to save a single one of hers and why she stayed. The woman in front of her was trying to put on a brave, fierce posture all the time to mask all the conflicts that were boiling inside her. All Yang wanted to do was cross the bridge and help untangle the chains that held Blake a prisoner of herself. And with that, she steeled her mind, and opened her mouth.

“But you wanted to talk to me,” Yang began. “To someone who wanted to understand. So you haven’t given up on peace. On believing in us.”

“The White Fang was first a movement to try and come to understanding with other life forms that could help us. After what happened in the past, Adam took over and made it into a war effort and I fought beside him all these years to try and do what was best for the faunus.” A deep breath, to recompose herself. Her face still stained with dry tears and eyes red. “But after what he did… He _planned_ that… So many lives...” Sun flinched were he stood. He barely escaped being one of them. “Maybe his way of thinking wasn’t the right one. But I’m still not sure what the right one _is_ ,” Blake took another tentative step towards Yang, who held her breath. Seeing her up close, it was like a magnet. Was she going crazy? Did the other woman feel that too? “You almost died trying to save us. You took down your own weapons to avoid killing our own, even after we tried to kill you and hurt your race for so many years. Maybe you can help me find what the right way is. Are you the right person… pilot Xiao Long?” She said the title mockingly, like General Ironwood.

Sun waited expectantly by the side. If his monkey tail could come loose, it would already have, with all that moving and swishing.

Yang didn’t have to think. She extended her hand, still covered in bandages, to a very confused looking Blake. Probably wasn’t a custom they had. Either way, Blake also extended her hand, to which Yang took and gave a tentative shake. Her hand was still damaged by the burn, but the pain was a silent whistle and the only heat she felt was from the warmth of Blake’s hand, like sparks flying. For a brief moment she saw Blake’s eyes grow wide, not from panic or fear, but something else, and Yang hoped it was from the same thing she was feeling.

“Call me Yang.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are going to get pretty gay from now on. I just hope that someone who sucks at romance like I do can do her best to really send out the feelings between Yang and Blake!
> 
> As always, you can hit me up (fam) at twitter handle @Martchelab to just say "hey, write more" or stuff like that. If you're really feeling it maybe draw the White Fang mechas? I think Blake's would be pretty dorky with the cat ears.
> 
> Cheers, wash your hands and stay safe! <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the summary a bit, because I thought the previous one wasn't as enticing. 
> 
> I'm a really worried how the actual bumbleby took a bit long to happen, but here it is! Hope you guys enjoy it. 
> 
> It's all downhill from now on. (jk)

After the talk Yang had with Blake and Sun, the rest of her days in the hospital room were uneventful. For the first time she actually listened to what Jaune said and stayed put for 3 whole days in her bed, being helped around by nurses and visited constantly by her sister and her fellow pilots, Pyrrha and Nora. When Weiss came to visit, Yang inquired to what they would do with the faunus, and she tried to reassure Yang that nothing bad was going to happen to them and that, for now, they were receiving medical check ups by Jaune and his staff to see how they were acclimating to Earth, as well as trying to learn more about the faunus’s body type.

They were lucky to have Jaune as the head of the medical staff, because apparently the goofy, well-natured spirit he had was well received by Blake and Sun, especially Sun, and they obliged to some of the testing, like blood samples and x-rays. They mainly found out that their blood didn’t have that many differences to humans and how their animals appendages developed together with the rest of their bone structure.

Yet, as much as all these scientific discoveries were interesting, Yang couldn’t wait to talk to Blake again. She had learned a lot from their first conversation – completely mind blowing if she was being honest – but the pieces still weren’t connecting, mainly how they never heard about this first human encounter with faunus years ago. More suspiciously, despite being extremely mad at her, Jacques Schnee was keeping to himself at the moment and letting Weiss take head of things again. Yang couldn’t help but wonder.

And, of course, to learn more about Blake herself. She could try blaming her curiosity all she wanted on her explorer nature but her heart knew the truth. She just wanted to know more about her, as a person, and why she had to pretend to have so much strength when she looked ready to crumble from the inside.

That’s why as soon as Jaune gave her permission to leave her hospital room and be able to wander around again – while using a cane to walk as to not exert too much force on her wounded side, and doing physical therapy a few times a week – she went straight to the area where Sun and Blake were being kept.

Despite not being “prisoners” per se, both faunus were kept in an isolated area of the EMDF base with the constant presence of guards and only authorized personnel were allowed in. Yang showed her pilot badge and the guards moved aside so she could enter.

It wasn’t _really_ that bad. It was more like a very small dorm, with two rooms (they were decent enough to give both Blake and Sun their privacy), a small garden in the middle and one bathroom. They were fed meals from the EMDF since they were still being tested about their digestive system and mainly because the faunus didn’t know much about Earth’s cuisine and food in general. Other than that, their hygiene and sleeping habits seemed to be the same as humans.

As Yang entered the small garden area, she was greeted and stunned by the vision of Blake seating in the grass with a book in her hand. Yang couldn’t bother with the title because she couldn’t help but think how great Blake looked even in the awful EMDF jumpsuit – they had switched from their pilot suit for comfort and to facilitate all the tests they were being submited to. The ceiling was really high so they didn’t see the need to cover it up and sunlight washed over the other womans figure. The small amount of wind that came through made her long, raven colored hair to swish a bit, so she had to move her hand from the book and put a few strands behind her ear.

_Is this really the experience of meeting a species from another world?,_ Yang thought to herself as she started walking towards her, taking care to use the cane properly. Her hands were still covered in bandages as the burns were still healing. It didn’t hurt that much to hold stuff anymore, as long as her hands were properly covered. 

“Great weather, huh?” It was the first thing she thought and said, and immediately mentally scolded herself. Yang liked to think she was a really great smooth talker who made all kind of girls swoon over her, but something about Blake simply disarmed her. “I mean… It’s spring so, not so hot and, uh...”

“We don’t really have many seasons in Menagerie,” Blake responded, not bothering to lift her eyes of the book. As Yang got closer to her, she could she that it was some sort of geography atlas of Earth. “The weather is sometimes a little more bearable and that’s all.” 

“Right. Solar flares, desert, dangerous monsters.” Yang said, trying to lighten up the mood a bit. She looked around and couldn’t help but notice that Sun wasn’t anywhere to be seen. “Where’s your friend? Being that aloof I would imagine he wouldn’t miss the chance to lay on the grass like this.”

“Sun isn’t much of a morning person,” Yang glanced at her wristwatch and saw it was a litle past eight a.m. “And these accommodations are really comfortable. Can’t blame him for wanting to sleep in.” Finally, Blake looked up at her, those amber eyes glowing in the sunlight, her brows up with a curious look. “Are you okay to be walking around already?”

“Oh, yeah!” Yang adjusted herself with her cane. “Jaune is a great doctor and we here at the EMDF have some state of the art medicine. I should be good to pilot again in a few weeks.” Yang noticed how Blake’s eyes went to her wounded side and all the bandages around her hands and arms. Something like… Compassion, flashed through those golden eyes, but quickly went back to a more neutral look.

“You should a least sit down. Being in the hospital for three days without getting up must require for your legs to rest some more before getting used to movement again.” Blake motioned to the lone bench in the garden area.

“So you’ve been keeping tabs on me?” Yang smirked as Blake’s neutral look faltered, her cat ears folding themselves and a blush going through her face. The blonde took the cue to sit down as suggested.

“N-no! It’s just…” She sighed, and seeing she wasn’t going to get any reading done anymore, put a book marker on the page she was and gently set the book on the ground. “That doctor. Jaune. He kept talking about you, how you’re _always_ _stupidly_ _reckless_ and made him work overtime.”

“Oh, yeah. He loves me though,” Yang laughed and it echoed in the almost empty garden. Blake’s ears moved around, trying to capture that sound. “And why are you sitting on the ground anyway? This bench isn’t all that bad.” It really wasn’t. The wood wasn’t worn out and it didn’t feel awkward. But Yang was just making excuses to get Blake closer to her.

“We don’t have such green in Menagerie,” Blake said, calmly, as she ran her slender fingers through the grass. She held onto a patch of it as if her life depended on it, trying to absorb the feeling as much as she could. “Our flora is a little different than yours but we still have trees, and grass. But never a color like this. So much… life,” Despite trying to maintain a poker face, she couldn’t hide the sadness behind her eyes, how the smile on her face hid so much sorrow.

“You guys have it really rough, huh,” It was all she could say. How could she start to understand a life so much different than hers? Despite all the normalcy that was on how the faunus looked or acted, it still didn’t change how different their lives were. Yang couldn’t ever think about a moment during her life she felt glad for grass being green. It was just something she had taken for granted.

And that’s why she needed to try and understand the faunus even more, so she could help them.

“Rough is a really simple way of putting it, yes,” Blake tried to chase the sadness away herself. “But we manage. At least we used to.”

A moment of silence stretched between them, with only the weak wind and their breathing making up sound. Yang focused her ears the best she could and could hear just a little of Blake’s gentle breathing. With a huge gulp of air, she gathered the courage to speak.

“I can’t begin to apologise for whatever we humans did to your kind in the past,” Yang started saying, locking her eyes with Blake. They were fired with determination and regret. “Especially because I… didn’t even know anything about it,” Blake scoffed a little, probably finding that hard to believe. “I swear. I didn’t know. But I really do hope we can start things a different way this time. To learn about each other better, “ _To learn about you_ , she thought, incapable of saying, even though she had said worst things to women in the past. “I swear. I’ll do everything I can to help you, and your people.”

“And what can a simple pilot do?” Blake asked, trying to sound sarcastic but her honesty, her pleading, was blossoming through her words.

“I saved your life,” Yang said matter of factly. “I think that’s a good start.”

-

Despite wanting to talk to Blake some more, Yang had to go do her physical therapy, so she bid the faunus farewell as she regretfully left the garden. Yang felt Blake’s stare pierce her back but then again, it could just be her mind and heart being hopeful.

After doing her PT and having another checkup with Jaune, finding it close to lunch hours, she went to the cafeteria as her stomach started to grumble. All that hospital food had nothing to offer compared to Ren’s cooking. And, as luck would have it, the whole gang was set up on their usual table already eating.

“There she is! Our suicidal pilot!” Nora screamed, getting up her seat for a second before Ren gently pushed her back down. “Seriously, I think you’re the only reason Jaune got promoted, with him showing his skills patching you up _all the time_.” 

“Come on Nora, ease up on her a little,” Pyrrha said gently as she gestured for Yang’s usual spot besides her. “How are you feeling?”

“Didn’t y’all visit me in the hospital just, like, yesterday?” Yang laughed as Ren got up to get her a tray of food. “Still all good, thanks to the doctor over here!” She went behind Pyrrha’s back and poked Jaune in the ribs just as he lifted up his fork, making he drop his food on his lap.

“H-hey!” Pyrrha grabbed a napkin and went to help clean him up. “Don’t thank me, despite yes, I did a lot of the work. Thank our fearless leader Weiss Schnee,” He gestured with his cup as Weiss just entered the cafeteria with Ruby besides her. “For all her investment in medical care. Cheers!”

“Cheers!” The group shouted as they clanked their plastic cups together and took a sip of their beverages. 

“Please,” Weiss pleaded, already with her packed lunch and sitting near Ren and Nora with Ruby sitting on her side. Ren brought Yang her tray of normal, human food and a huge jar of cookies to Ruby, to which Weiss quickly swapped for another packed lunch she had brought. _Dessert only after your meal,_ she quickly whispered to Ruby as the other girl whimpered. “I’m just doing the best I can.”

“Which is a lot,” Yang said with a mouthful. “Thanks, Weiss.”

“So...” Nora, already having finished aspiring her food like the monster she was, propped herself low on the table like she was gossiping in the highschool cafeteria. “I heard Yang _already went_ to visit our new friends around the block. One _friend_ in particular.” She wiggled her eyebrows so much Yang thought they would blow away from her forehead.

“Geez, what is this, highschool drama?” But the blonde couldn’t help the blush that formed on her face as she avoided everyone else stares and just picked on her food. “I said I wanted to understand them. What’s wrong with going to talk?”

“Oh, nothing, just how romantic it sounds, to sacrifice yourself for a woman you don’t even know, and she’s from outer space, and how your love will breach all interplanetary barriers!” Yang had to really hold herself not to punch Nora right then and now. “And why is Yang Xiao Long, _the womanizer pilot_ , getting all blushy and shy?”

“Oh god, I really don’t want to hear this...” Ruby was trying to drown out anything said about her sister’s romantic life and tried to grab a cookie again, just to have her hand swatted by Weiss. 

“Yang, _please_ don’t flirt with the aliens. I really thought I shouldn’t have to say this.” Weiss eyerolled and sighed, double combo.

“I’m not flirting with her! I just thought that if they really had a first contact with us years ago and that prompted an all out _war_ we should try and make things a little different this time.” Without noticing, she made the table gather a whole other tone, much more serious. Weiss, especially, flinched hearing those words. She probably was wondering about how much the Schnee company, being a leader in outer space everything, could have been involved. “… Sorry. I didn’t want to…” Yang sighed, and scratched her neck nervously. “It’s just… It looks like a second chance. We can’t ruin this.”

“And if you hook up with the hot cat girl, double win, right?” Nora quickly said, and the bright mood was back up as was Yang’s temper, even if she did laugh a bit.

“Okay, maaaybe I am just a little attracted to her…” Yang said in the lower volume she could, but even that couldn’t stop Weiss from jumping from her seat. 

“Oh my god, I was joking!” She had her hands on her waist and Yang knew that was time for a typical Weiss scolding. “ _Please_. Do Not. Flirt. With. The. Alien! God! Can you not be a lesbian for like, two minutes?!” She sat down after Ruby gently rubbed her lower back for a few seconds – to which she took the opportunity to finally grab a cookie, not like Weiss cared about that anymore – and breathed deeply, even the scar on her eye looking stressed out.

“I wonder if they have a different type of reproductive system and you can have kids? I would love to study them.” Jaune wondered out loud, to which everyone in the table burst out laughing and Weiss gave a even bigger sigh. He looked confused because his question as a genuine one, so Pyrrha just gave him a kiss on the cheek between laughs.

As Yang tried to keep eating her food while holding her laugh, she just silently thanked for the friends she had. Despite all the anxiousness of what was a hidden part of terrible human history none of them ever heard about and the threat of a even bigger war on the horizon, to be able to laugh like this was a huge relief for her, and probably to all of them. 

She thought, just to herself, how she hoped she could bring Blake to lunches like this and have her laugh together with them.

-

Back in the faunus sort of residential area, Sun finally got out of his room, stretching and welcoming sunlight. He couldn’t get used to the whole jumpsuit covering his body so he had the upper half zipped down and his chest exposed. Blake, still trying to read, caught the sight from the corner of her eyes and just heavily eyerolled. 

“You missed breakfast,” She said to him. “But I’m guessing lunch must be about to arrive.” 

“Awesomesauce!” His monkey tail went all directions as he went up to the bench and layed down, his arms crossed and on the back of his head. “Human food is pretty good. You know they have something called _bacon_?”

“Yeah… I guess it’s easy to make good food when you don’t have to fight for survival all the time.” Blake stared a bit longer on the bench Sun was on, which he quickly noticed.

“Something wrong?”

“No… Not really.” She bookmarked her book yet again. Pleased as she was to be given books about Earth so they could learn more, she wasn’t given nearly as much peace and quiet she needed. “That pilot came to visit. _Yang_.” She said her name with surprisingly ease, as if her ears like how it sounded coming from her. “But you were still asleep.”

“Oh, grapes,” Sun arranged himself better on the bench, sitting down so he could better look at Blake. “She seems like a pretty great human, wouldn’t mind talking to her a bit more. And, by the looks of it,” Blake knew that sly look of him and she already hated it. “You too, want to know more about her.”

“What?” She huffed, indignantly, standing up from ground she was just peacefully sitting on. “What do you mean, Sun?”

“Come on, Blakey.” She hated when he called that. _But not really,_ she thought. “Sure, she saved our lives, but the way you guys talked back in the hospital room… I don’t know. I felt almost _wrong_ standing there. Like I was interrupting something. And I never expected for you to open up so much to someone you just met… Especially a _human_.” He was a goofy one, sure, but Sun was equally gentle and somewhat emotionally smart. He knew Blake since they were kids and unfortunately he knew how to read her a lot better than most people. 

“I…” She looked for words but they seemed to escape her. “I just think she isn’t bad. Not as bad as… Adam,” His name, like a curse downing on her. “Like Adam used to say about them.”

“Well, we now know that asshole’s true nature and that he probably was wrong about a lot of things.” Sun was saying that just for Blake, though. He recognized Adam’s foul nature since the beginning but everytime he tried telling Blake she just pushed him away. He finally figured out that the only way to stay by her side – to protect and help her – was to turn a blind eye, until she herself saw Adam for what he really was.

“Yeah.” She inhaled, deep. Earth’s air was like being granted life with every inhale. Her mind reeled back to Menagerie and how her friends, her _people_ was suffering.

“Back to Yang though,” Sun broke her reverie with another smirk of his. “It wouldn’t be that bad to give her a chance to prove herself.”

“The way you’re talking is like I somehow met my _soulmate_ in another planet.” Blake eyerolled and cringed on how stupid it sounded, coming from her mouth.

“Why not?” Sun got up from the bench and plopped himself down on the grass, laying down besides Blake, with his eye’s closed. “Sure, space is so much bigger than us, all of us. Bigger than this planet and every other one. There’s so much out there. But I don’t think it’s that bad to believe this sort of thing. To try and think that even with everything, we are singular in a way.”

“How can you be so dumb and be able say smart things at the same time?” Blake chuckled, a sound she hadn’t heard from herself in a long time. 

“Hey, I got to appeal to all crowds. The abs alone aren’t enough sometimes.” She poked him in the sides and they both laughed for a bit, until the siren for food delivery started. 

“Grub time!” Sun got up before her and excitedly ran to the door. “Ohh, can’t wait to see what is this time…”

Blake stayed put for a while, thinking about what he said. It still could’ve been just Sun being Sun and teasing her, but despite her whole poker face while conversing with Yang, she couldn’t control the way her heart looped around itself. Adam’s words were heavy on her mind, how meaningless he said she was and how the faunus cause it was what mattered most. She didn’t think he was completely wrong, and she did want to fight for her people. But she didn’t want to think she mattered any less, despite what he said.

After so many years she wondered if she was allowed to this. To be singular.

Lavender flashed in her mind as she went to get her food.


	5. Chapter 5

As she left her last session of physical therapy, Yang was already more up and about than Jaune recommended her. She didn’t have to use a cane anymore, but she couldn’t force herself too much or run around. She was still stitched up and couldn’t risk it and had just one more week and a half to “stay still”. It would leave a scar though, Jaune said during one of their lunches, and Yang could see it every time she changed her bandages, although it had regressed from the first time that she saw. Her hands didn’t escape that fate either and after removing her bandages for good she saw the faint burnt marks that were left. _At least I didn’t lose a limb_ , she thought jokingly, also thinking that girls loved scars anyway.

Her destination, as she “fast walked” the EMDF facilities? Of course, the same as every week and every day: the faunus containment area. 

Since her encounter with Blake in the garden, she didn’t have the luck to find the girl again. Everytime she visited, both Sun and Blake were away for exams. And, despite having access to their area, she wasn’t allowed to linger around too much, so she couldn’t wait for Blake to return. It was a frustration everytime, but since today Jaune said there would be no examinations being conducted, she felt confident that she would be able to meet Blake.

Her heart was already soaring around faster than usual and her hands felt a little damp. It dawned on her that the great Yang Xiao Long was  _really nervous_ about a girl. Sure, she was human and felt nervous about a lot of things, but she liked to think that at least on the subject of women it she soared above the others (when Jaune first stated to her that he liked Pyrrha he begged to Yang not flirt with her, even as a joke, despite the fact that they were all friends since childhood).

No more time to dwell on that subject though, as she arrived in front of faunus facility. The guards were already getting tired of sending her away in the last days, but this time they looked even tenser than usual – and being a guard already normally meant you were a coiled spring waiting for any sort of action.

“Good morning, pilot Xiao Long,” one of them greeted her, a woman. She always sounded a lot more friendlier than her colleague when talking to Yang, to which, she thought, just proved her point. “I’m afraid the pri-” Yang gave her an annoyed look and she quickly retracted herself. “I mean, the… people contained here aren’t around today as well.” Classified news was something that didn’t fly quickly around EMDF since the higher ups were all tight lipped – mainly to avoid it going out to the public. 

But, since people who were lower ranked couldn’t help but wonder, the higher ups let up some basic information. So, the guard knew they were guarding aliens, but they didn’t know any details, like their race and such.

“What? No,” Yang quickly retorted, and when she went to lean on her wounded side she felt a pull. She masked her grunt with her angry face which, wasn’t really a lie. “Jaune – I mean, Dr. Arc said there were no exams today. Where could they be?”

“Well…” The woman hesitated, like she didn’t like how she was making Yang angry. Poor girl. 

The man, on the other hand, wasn’t enticed. He sighed, and looked straight at Yang as much as she could see his eyes through his visor.

“Schnee and General Ironwood came earlier and took them.” He said. And before Yang could ask, he continued. “And no, we don’t know where.”

“Which Schnee?” But she already knew the answer and felt her blood boil.

“President Schnee,” the woman said, not upset by how her colleague didn’t give the man his proper title. His employees didn’t really like him. And, as if it needed further clarification, “Jacques Schnee.”

That was it. Jaune could be damned, Yang turned backwards and started running. Her left side pulled at itself, sending out her brain a muted scream of pain. But her heart, ever the one in charge in this moments, screamed even louder. She could hear her blood thumping on her ears as she ran around the EMDF. Not blindly, though. She had a destination.

As she went to knock on Weiss Schnee’s office door, the shorter woman surprised her opening the door. Her pristine ponytail didn’t match the look on her face, her scar contorting the way it did when she was stressed. 

“Weiss, what the fuck?!” Yang panted, her shoulders sagging up and down from the effort. Ironically, Blake’s words about her needing to rest her legs swayed around her mind. She quickly pushed those memories down, worry overtaking her. “Your father and the General, out of fucking nowhere-”

“I know, Yang,” Weiss put a hand in front of Yang as if asking her to pause for a sec. “I just heard about it from Winter.” For as much as Winter Schnee seemed to always have a stick up her ass, her loyalty and consciouness were in the right place. If something didn’t seem right, she couldn’t keep to herself even if it meant defying General’s orders. “They’re in a bunker down the levels of the EMDF. She sent me a quick message and haven’t answered since. I’m guessing the signal down there is non-existent.”

“That son of a bitch...” Yang couldn’t restrain herself. Taking their “prisoners” down to a secret bunker deep inside the Earth? God could only know what Jacques Schnee had planned to do with them.

“I know.” Weiss put a hand on her shoulder. Despite the urgency of the moment, feeling the small hand of Weiss on her shoulder grounded Yang a little. She still saw red, but it dulled to a lighter shade of pink. Her anger was topped of with a bottle cap until it could properly dispense itself. “Luckily she had time to tell me how to get there. We might meet some resistance from the guards on the way, and I know you’re still healing...” Her sight went to Yang’s closed fists. Weiss was a long time friend and witness to many of the times Yang punched someone in the face.

“Jaune will hate us for this,” Yang said, smiling through gritted teeth. “As much as he can also fix me again. Let’s go.”

-

A few punched guards and a lot of stolen keycards later, Weiss and Yang entered an elevator both of them had never saw before. It only had one button so they pressed it. 

As it went down, they could feel the pressure in their bodies stronger, descending quickly into the Earth. The elevator was completely shut so they couldn’t even see anything. 

“So, what’s the plan?” Yang smoothed her knuckles, sore from punching guards on the way. As it would be expected, she usually was a woman of action, planning and logic wasn’t her forte – except when it came to battle. 

“I… I don’t really know,” Weiss admited, curling into herself. Yang went and gave Weiss a hug. She quickly accepted it, hiding her head as she cuddled into Yang. “We came here but…” Her voice came out muffled as she processed what to say. “We have no idea what they could be doing, or why they are doing this so suddenly.” She pulled herself from Yang, as if she had recharged from the embrace. “But we need to prepare for the worst. And… Try to convince them to not do… whatever they are planning to.”

“Convince them that we need to try and understand the faunus.”

“Right. Especially considering… whatever happened years ago.”

“Weiss...” The smaller woman looked away. “Do you know anything about it?...” 

“No,” She answered, almost ashamed. “As soon as I could I went for all records of Schnee Company activity and found nothing about it. I swear, if I knew anything, I would tell you.”

“I guess we’ll need to ask directly to the font then,” Wether it would be to the faunus or Schnee, Yang didn’t know yet. She much rather preferred the former. 

“Yang… please don’t do anything rash.” Weiss pleaded, and Yang couldn’t miss the worry on her friends voice. She already gave them a scare with the last battle as well.

“Don’t worry, Ice Princess. We came here to negotiate and talk first, right?” Yang smirked, trying to soothe both Weiss – and herself. “Even if we _did_ resort to violence on the way.” Before Weiss could protest, Yang lifted her hand up and continued. “I know, it was the only way you could think of. No worries. I’ll take full blame for that.”

“… Thank you.” 

The elevator gave a cheery “ping!”, apparently arriving to it’s destination, and as the doors slowly opened, Yang got in front of Weiss with her already bruised fists tightly closed.

For all the secrecy, the room they entered seemed pretty normal. It was a normal meeting room with a metal table, a few very uncomfortable looking metal chairs, and a display screen on the wall that was turned off. It had doors on both sides, leading to places they didn’t know. But, more importantly than that were the people composing the scene.

As expected, Jacques Schnee (now with a very surprised face, his mustache trembling) standing behind General Ironwood and a few guards with uniforms both Yang and Weiss hadn’t seen yet. Winter Schnee besides the General, although a few steps back, trying to mask her expecting face with a bit more of a surprise.

The guards were pointing their guns non-chalantly to both Blake and Sun, clad in their EMDF jumpsuits and back with handcuffs. One of them quickly moved to point his gun towards the intruders slowly exiting the elevator.

“What is the meaning of this?!” Jacques was the first to speak. “And put down that gun you buffoon, one of those intruding us is my _daughter_.” The way he spitted the word made Weiss flinch so much Yang could feel it herself. “At least for now. What do you two _children_ think you’re doing? And how did you get here?”

“Let’s just say your guards need better self-defense training,” Yang cracked her knuckles and now it was Jacques’s turn to flinch. That little rat. Yang was the least armed person in the room and he still was afraid of any possible danger to him, hiding himself behind the General.

“Pilot Xiao-Long.” The General’s voice ressounded around the room. “I hope you know that you’ll be _severely_ punished for this misbehaviour.”

“We can surely discuss that later, _General_ ,” Yang couldn’t hide the bite from her words. “What I want to know right now is why are our _guests_ ,” She punctuated the word knowing Jacques would be furious. “Are being held in a secret bunker none of us knew about, handcuffed and with guns pointed towards them?”

“I’m guessing it’s a repeat from the last time,” Blake, finally, spoke. Both her and Sun had been shocked watching the exchange between the humans but she took her composure back again. The one Yang knew was just for show, but the bite in Blake’s words, and the look she gave Yang – hurt, like the small blossom of trust between them had been brutally stomped on – made her heart ache more than any punishment Ironwood could give her.

“Silence!” Jacques scolded her, his confidence only showing towards people who were more defenseless than himself. “This is none of your business, _Pilot_ Xiao Long. Especially not after that little stunt you played destroying _my_ missiles and letting the enemy escape. But if you really want to know,” His weak confidence gave him enough courage to step in front of General Ironwood. Yang’s anticipation grew. “We’re talking. That’s all.” He smiled, and it disgusted her.

“Bullshit!” She spat the words at him. 

“Father, please.” Weiss finally came out of her silence, going around Yang. They were still positioned in front of the elevator. The General’s group was on the right side of the table and the faunus were on the left side, almost pushed towards the corner of the room. “These two faunus haven’t done anything to us. They helped save Yang,” Not that this argument could really convince Jacques. “Why burn the bridges we are still building?” Weiss wasn’t the head figure for most of the time just for show. She was smart and knew her way with her words like Yang knew hers with fists. “Since they arrived here we hadn’t a single White Fang AI attack. It’s the first time in five years. Their presence here could finally mean for us the end of this meaningless war. _Please_.” Yang knew it was probably killing Weiss inside to have to plead to her father, and she felt nothing but love for her friend for giving herself up just to help Blake and Sun.

“Miss Schnee, despite your words being true in some regard,” Ironwood spoke again, clearly more well versed than Jacques to answer Weiss. “What we are doing here is taking preventive measures. One of the faunus was attempting communication with their kind.” Yang quickly looked back to Blake and Sun and saw Blake’s face change. “We couldn’t quite figure out their transmission but it could mean they were calling backup and another attack like the last one could happen. This bunker, although probably not very inviting,” He gestured his gloved hands towards the cramped room. “Is a way to prevent any other form of communication they might have to escape.”

Yang looked at Blake, holding her stare, silently asking  _why_ .

“It wasn’t like that!” Blake spoke up, her voice a little too high for Jacques’s taste as the guards moved closer towards her, their guns still up. “If you just let me _explain_ instead of dragging us down to the ground and start threatening us-” Even Sun, with handcuffed hands, seemed to try and make Blake back down a little. The air around the room was boiling with emotions and his self preservation was kicking in, apparently.

“And how can we believe anything one of _you_ tell us?” Jacques said.

“The same can be said to you! If you hadn’t mistreated us the first time, years ago, we wouldn’t be doing this! Can’t you understand my people is trying to _survive_?! We asked for help the first time and you… _experimented_ and tortured us!” Blake couldn’t help the tears that spilled from her eyes. She was so intent on her words she probably didn’t even notice them, streaming down her face. “And again, we try to _understand_ ,” Yang felt the word being directed towards her, enough strength in it to make her take a step back. “You don’t believe us and start threatening us again!”

The room went dead silent, except for Blake’s ragged breathing. Sun finally held her back, comforting her. Her words stayed on the air, stale. One of the guard’s faltered slightly, his gun lowering just a small amount. Ironwood closed his eyes, pondering. And all Yang wanted was to go to Blake and hold her as tight as possible. She took a few tentative steps closer to her, albeit still distant, and softening her eyes when they met Blake’s.  _Whatever sort of communication she was trying_ , Yang thought, hopeful,  _I doubt it was to Adam. Or to command any sort of attack_ . The way she knew that, as both kept looking at each other, was just by trying to feel Blake. 

That wasn’t the look of a warmonger. That wasn’t the posture of a soldier. It was a woman, tired of fighting against the current, trying to save those she cared about. Something Yang could relate greatly. 

Someone who just wanted to protect and save people couldn’t be bad. It was someone who could and should be trusted.

“I believe her,” Yang said, simply. She was still looking at Blake when she said it and the faunus woman knew those words were mostly to her. She then looked back to the other humans around her. “And I think we honestly owe it to them.” She steeled herself, looking directly at Jacques. “I still don’t know what _we_ did years ago that created such a rift betweent our people,” _And as God as my fucking witness I_ _ **will**_ _know,_ she thought, and her look most likely sent that to Jacques as he hid himself behind Ironwood again. “But I think it’s reason enougth to trust them. And, if you need, I volunteer myself as a… faunus… ambassador. Or something.” This part she wasn’t so sure about, so she went to Weiss for support after she said it. 

The short woman was surprised but Yang nodded to her and she took the cue to help out.

“And I will help pilot Xiao Long as a _Schnee_ representative in faunus matters. That way, when this sort of thing happen, we can take better measures than bring then handcuffed to a bunker down to the center of the Earth. I think all of us can agree to that.” 

They both held Ironwood’s stare. Yang hoped he was accessing his not maniac soldier side as he visibly considered it. 

Jacques, on the other hand, felt completly out of the loop, as a child who was watching his parents make decisions without him.

Finally, the General spoke.

“Very well. We will grant you both those temporary titles and access to all faunus related matters,” Yang breathed a sigh of relief she didn’t knew she was holding. “That you _will report directly to me_. Nothing will be done or decided without my input. I do agree that with have a debt to be repaid to them.” He looked almost… pained, what seemed like the ghosts of his past going around his head. “Before anything else though, I would like to know exactly what that transmission was about.” And then his eyes went straight to Blake, who, despite looking a lot more calmer, still felt overwhelmed by the General’s undivided attention.

“I...” She looked around, not sure what to do. Sun nudged her with a smile. She stopped on Yang, who slowly smiled. _Understand._ “It was a message to… my parents,” Blake said, feeling almost embarassed. Everyone else looked a little shocked for how casual and _normal_ that was. They kept silent, expecting something more. Blake continued, “They lead a part of the White Fang movement that aims for _peace_ between humans. But their movement lost strenght since… Well…” _Since the incident in the past_ , Yang thought. “But, with how you received us here this time… _at first_ , at least, I thought… We could try again. Peace.”

“Try to _understand_ , right?” Yang replied to her with a smile. Blake looked away, a blush on her face. Sun snickered a little.

The hot, angry bubble around the room went away and the whole mood seemed a lot more relaxed. Jacques still looked like deer in headlights with everything being decided without him even giving a word, but as the spineless rat he was, he couldn’t form a sentence.

“Well, if all is done, I think we should all head up now?” Yang said, lightly. She strecthed her arms with a pleasing crack, and pressed the elevator button, making the door slowly open again. “As much as I would like to talk a little more business, I think my wound reopened and it’s been bleeding for a while.” She put her hands on her left pocket, feeling up her abdomen. As she took her hand out, it was covered in blood. “Yeah. So, if you don’t mind?” She patted her bloody hand on her legs, cleaning it off and smearing it with blood as she used her other hand to point towards the open elevator.

Weiss screamed at her as the guards finally lowered their weapons, completely dumbfounded. Ironwood closed his eyes letting out a huge sigh as he ordered Winter to remove the handcuffs. Jacques was still rooted to the spot, feeling overwhelmed by his loss. Sun sent out a loud laughter at all of this as he had his handcuffs removed and Blake, after the initial shock, laughed slightly.

It was only that small laugh that Yang registered, with a dumb smile plastered on her face, as Weiss, scolding her  _ a lot _ , struggled to push her into the elevator.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the more political chapter, had to get some things set up. And now the gay can continue in relative peace!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update. The brain sometimes isn't cooperating with writing (or being productive in any way) because of the whole pandemic and staying at home situation. My city's situation is pretty dire but we're hanging in there.
> 
> Hope you enjoy, and keep staying safe!

“Could you please, _please_ , stop doing this kind of thing?” Jaune pleaded, sighing heavily, as he stopped to see if the bandages were alright. “Imagine being chief of the medical staff and receiving a call like ‘Oh, Dr. Arc, Pilot Xiao Long is here bleeding _again_ and she’s trying to rob medical equipment’, and _then_ having to come here do this nurse work?” He wasn’t even trying to hide any discontent anymore and just sounded tired. Even more so when he looked up and just saw Yang grinning at him.

“Come on, Jaune,” She said, adjusting her shirt. Since her EMDF jumpsuit was covered in blood, she had switched to something of hers, more casual and actually _stylish_. That meant a flannel shirt and jeans. “I knew you would be mad if you found out so I was just going to get enough materials to help myself without having to bother you. The staff didn’t have to snitch on me though.” She snorted. They all looked very panicked when they entered the room and saw Yang, covered in blood with Weiss wrapped around her arm trying to drag the blonde away, scavenging the supply cabinets. “You know I patched myself before and it all went well.”

“Well, that was when you were a delinquent,” Weiss interrupted. She was sitting on the couch next to the hospital bed. They didn’t need to do all this on the hospital room they were in, but the staff was still a little afraid of Yang and trying to clean up the mess she caused by ravaging the cabinets. So Jaune shoved her in the closest private place, with Weiss following suit. “Now you are actually an important person and we need you to be in your best form.”

“Aw, you’re making me blush, Ice Queen.”

“Shut up.”

“Will do.”

Despite all the bickering, the mood was light. The meeting Yang and Weiss had come running from (literally. Yang never knew Weiss could run so well on heels and grew new respect for her) was passing through Yang’s head, but she wasn’t stressed out. It was a victory of sorts. Whatever Jacques had planned to do with Blake and Sun had been stopped and now she wasn’t going to get caught by surprise with his actions, _she_ had more control and authority on the situation than him.

Despite all his anger and stomping around, Jacques knew he had his hands tied when it was Ironwood’s order. He thought he could keep Ironwood on his pocket but never imagined how much of an aura the General had with everyone around him.

It was always hard to remember the EMDF was civilian, not military.

“Okay, now you’re all good,” Jaune said. “ _Again._ Just a few weeks till you can go around running around. Can you listen to me this time?” He said, snapping his fingers in front of the womans face, but Yang wasn’t listening to him. “Hello?...” He followed her line of sight to see what had her so distracted and was met with amber eyes and cat ears.

“Sorry...” Blake said, blushing. She was hanging around the open door to the room, with Sun right behind her. They both looked better than they had been at the bunker, no handcuffs anymore. “I didn’t mean to-”

The first thing Yang noticed was how Blake’s eyes went right to her injury. When she apparently figured that all was fine, she drew a small breath of relief before Sun went barging besides her and actually entering the room.

The second thing she noticed was that, for the first time, there weren’t any guards following them around. They were alone.

“Hey, you okay?” Sun went to Yang, standing by Jaune’s side and looking her up and down. He turned to Jaune, with faux worry. “Tell it to me straight, doc. Is she gonna live?” He couldn’t even hold his theatrics long enough to finish the sentence and his grin quickly went wide.

“You seem in a good mood as always, Sun,” Jaune said. Yang thought it was strange how the two acted like acquaintances already, but she imagined that after so many medical exams some sort of bond might have formed between them. And also Sun seemed to be the most friendly and extroverted person ever. “And yes, she is going to live. Only to get me to patch her again soon, I imagine.” Jaune was still being curt to her, but his smile was growing out as well.

“Wait,” Weiss got up the couch. She was stunned by the interruption and seemed to have the same questions that Yang had, but could actually form them. Yang was still entrapted by Blake’s eyes. “What are you two doing here?” Realising her tone might be a little too accusatory, she backed up and shook her head, her high ponytail swishing around. “I’m sorry, that might’ve seemed rude… What I mean is-”

“Why we aren’t being followed by those soldiers everywhere?” Sun interrupted her, his monkey tail excitedly going everywhere. He gave a pat on Jaune’s shoulder and then went to sit beside Yang on the hospital bed. “Well, thanks to you two barging in earlier and that whole _ambassador_ thing and how we should attempt peace, the General thought that keeping us locked down wasn’t the best thing. So he gave us relatively free access to the areas. We still have a curfew and scheduled meals and such,” He shrugged, not quite bothered by it. “But it beats having to stay on that little dorm all day. So, yeah! And of course the first thing we decided to do was come and check up on our _savior_ ,” He turned to Yang, putting a hand on her shoulder. She felt like it was a bit of an invasion of her personal space, but didn’t bother to swat him away. “Thanks again. Although the idea to come here was Blake’s.” He said, a little lower, so just Yang could hear. She blushed and, still looking at Blake saw that she blushed as well. The cat ears probably weren’t just for show and she must’ve heard Sun as well.

“I thank you guys for your concern,” Yang said, finally broking eye contact with Blake, also getting up from the bed and stretching. “But what about the rest of the EMDF? Your presence here was still… Kind of secretive.” She stretched her arms up till she heard something go ‘crack’ and went to stand besides Weiss. A little closer to Blake, basically.

“The General said he is going to inform the rest of the staff about us properly,” Blake said, assuming a more neutral expression and tone. “Since the main objective is peace, it won’t make sense to keep us hidden from everyone. But I still think is just so he can have eyes on us everywhere.” She turned her head to the side, looking away, a bit annoyed. Yang considered and that type of reasoning was very like Ironwood to have.

But still.

Yang’s heart went ahead of her, and skipped around like mad.

It meant she had a whole lot of time and opportunity to hang around with Blake.

She looked at her watch: almost time for lunch. She grinned.

“So, you two want to grab lunch with us?” Yang said, simply, surprising not everyone in the room. Sun grinned knowingly and the way his tail excitedly tapped the bed said everything.

“Yang, they just said they have _scheduled_ lunches. We shouldn’t interfere-” Weiss started.

“One time won’t hurt. And they need to at least try Ren’s cooking!” Yang replied but Weiss didn’t sound convinced. “Come on, Weiss. Let’s say it’s a… work lunch. Like a _meeting_ with the ambassadors and stuff. Sounds okay, right?”

Weiss crossed her arms and huffed, still not completely convinced. Yet, although her moniker was “the Ice Queen”, she had a bigger heart than average. And with that, and Yang’s pleading look towards her, she had no choice but to give in, with a huge sigh and eye roll to go together.

“ _Fine_. But we really need to work after that.”

“Yes!” Yang pumped her fist in the air and gave Weiss a tight side hug. “Jaune, you coming?”

“I still have some work to do around here.” He grabbed his briefcase he had left sitting in the couch. “And talk with my staff about upping our security around here.” Yang chucked nervously. Blake and Sun looked at each other confused. “So you guys can go ahead.”

“All right then.” Yang turned to Sun and Blake. “You two, ready to have your tastebuds blown out of your mouth?”

-

Their tastebuds blew out of their mouths.

Not literally, of course. But Sun was basically crying while eating his meal and Blake had stars in her eyes the moment Ren put a serving of fish (‘one of the staff went fishing and brought a whaul of tuna for us’, he said) in front of her. He probably used the cat ears as a guessing to what would be best to serve her.

Yang had barely touched her food, just admiring how happy Blake looked. Food had a magic way to make people let the guards down, especially good food.

She didn’t miss Weiss sneaking glances at her, though. And the way she creased her eyebrows, Yang already knew it meant “ _we_ need _to talk about this later._ ” but she didn’t really care, as long as the woman in front of her was stuffing her mouth with fish.

They got lucky that the cafeteria was still pretty empty, despite lunch hours. Not everyone had normal schedules around the EMDF and most of them were too work focused to leave their duties anyway, unless they were about to pass out.

Yang also remembered that today the pilots had training all through the day so they had limited lunch time and didn’t come to cafeteria, so it was just the four of them and a few others.

She also didn’t miss the glance the few people around them gave to Sun and Blake. She knew Blake had already noticed since they entered but so far the food had her really distracted.

It was the brief moments of respite like this that Yang stopped to try and think a little about things around her. People usually took her for granted, the hot headed pilot who went punching her way through things since she was a kid, but that was just because she hadn’t yet found space enough to vocalize everything on her mind.

She had good friends, great friends even, sure. Her sister was incredible and always had her back in her geeky, awkward way, and her father usually called once a week to check up on both of them. But none of them had the urge of an explorer like she did.

Like her mother did.

And even that wasn’t everything.

She didn’t know why, though. Why the stars seemed to allign themselves in a way that she had found Blake (and Blake found her, she hoped), and she felt she could go ways in talking with her. Like she could finally bare her soul beyond the brawler, beyond even the explorer she kept at bay until she was done with her mission to protect Earth. Like an explosion in the cosmos that birthed a star and a new universe with it, she felt sparks all around the two of them, sparks ready to ignite something big.

Something beautiful.

And really hoped, and actually believed sometimes, that the woman devouring a fish like it was the last she would ever had in front of her, felt the same.

Because for Yang, when Blake spoke, everything else muted, like they were deep in space, with only the void around them and their words were the lights coming from stars.

“So, for work matters,” Weiss interrupted her reverie. Yang didn’t know how but her friend already had a stack of papers on her hand and was browsing through them. “I think we should start from the beginning. Your names are Blake and Sun, correct?” Her eyes went back and forth from the papers she held to the two people eating in front of her.

Blake had less than a mouthful than Sun, so she took the question as the man just vigorously shook his head positively.

“Yes, despite the different language the names stay pretty much the same,” Blake said, and Yang always forgot that they didn’t even technically speak the same thing and was thanks to faunus technology translating real time both for understanding and speech.

“Do you have any last names?… Or something like that. In Earth usually people have a first name their parent’s choose and the family name.” Weiss continued.

“Wukong!” Sun shouted after swalloing more food that was humanly possible in a single gulp. “Family name is a big deal with us faunus too. Since… Well...” He fidgeted on his seat, poking the banana on his plate.

“Since our people don’t have great odds of surviving,” Blake said, steeling herself again, assuming that neutral, forced look of strength. Yang didn’t miss the pain that flashed through those amber eyes. “To have a lasting family name is a big deal. It means you survived long.”

“And yours is?…” Yang asked instead of Weiss, not being able to contain her curiosity.

“Belladonna.”

“It’s one of the most long running families back home!” Sun said excitedly. Yang was amazed on how he could go so easily from a sour mood to a happy one, to twisting a bad spot into a good one. She also saw how that, somehow, contrasted well with Blake, and she saw the other woman light up a bit, almost seeming… proud? But for some reason her face twisted to something heavier, like at the same time it brought good memories it also brought a heavy weight on her shoulder.

Yang could recognize the feeling because it hit close to home to when people talked about Summer – a tinge of happinness accompanied by pain, hand in hand.

“Well, good. So it’s Sun Wukong and Blake Belladonna,” Weiss continued, writing things down on her papers. “That seems like a good start. So, moving on-”

“Weiss,” Yang poked her friend in the shoulder, earning a furrowed brow from her in response. “I know I was the one who suggested _work lunch_ , but maybe we should give them a break and talk about this later? I mean,” She shrugged her shoulders, a smirk on her face. “They just got out a basement and handcuffs. Let’s just… enjoy the food, yeah? I know _some people_ really are invested in ther meals.” And she looked over at Blake, who blushed strongly. Her plate was cleaned up but Ren was already coming behind her with another serving. He had kind of a six sense to knowing when people were still hungry.

Yang guessed it was probably just because he dated _Nora._

“Well…” Weiss, still with furrowed brows, looked over her paper stack. She sighed, and pushed the papers away and went for her cutlery. “We should be giving a better example than my father, I suppose.” And went to neatly and politetly eat her food. Always the proper lady.

“Yeah so, can you talk me more about this _banana_ stuff here?” Sun asked with the same glint in his eyes that Blake had while digging on her plate of fish.

-

After everyone finished their meals, Blake with an astounding _three_ servings but still not beating Sun with his five meals, _who still didn’t beat Nora’s ten_ , Weiss suggested that they should take the rest of the day off while she first organized documents and how they should procceed with the peace talks. Everyone agreed, especially Sun, who went right to exploring the EMDF. To that, both Blake and Weiss sighed heavily and found some common ground to relate.

Weiss left a little after Sun, while both Yang and Blake lingered, still glued to their seats.

Yang felt her palms sweat slightly, something she didn’t feel even in the toughest battles she thought – on and off her mecha. She thought how silly she was being but didn’t miss Blake’s cat ears moving around nervously, despite her face stilled on deadpan.

“So…” Yang broke the silence first. She felt Blake’s stare on her and the intensity of it. She could try to put a mask on her whole face, but her eyes were as telltale as her ears, who focused solely on Yang’s words. “You’re going around to explore as well? If you don’t mind I… Could show you around, if-”

“I’m sure Sun will tell me all about this place later, thanks.” Blake said, and Yang deflated visibly. Blake quickly backtracked. “I mean! I… I actually had something else in mind. If you don’t mind you could… Tell me more? About Earth?” Blake asked, almost shyly, her mask slowly dissolving. “There’s only so much you can learn from books, I guess.”

Yang lit up after hearing that and quickly shot up from her seat. Blake, confused, did the same.

“Sure!” She said, a little more louder than she should, and some of the few eyes turned in their direction. “I mean… Yeah, sure, we could talk! Earth and… all that.” She continued, lowering her voice. As she went back to sitting down, Blake interrupted her raising a hand.

“Actually… I have another request.”

-

“You know you don’t have to stay _only_ here anymore, right?” Yang asked as soon as they passed the guarded door of the faunus area.

It was still the place both Sun and Blake were currently residing for sleep and such, and still guarded only to some people with access to it, but the faunus now could go around the whole EMDF. Yang looked confusely at Blake, who calmly went to sit on the grass again.

She went to pick up a book, laying in the ground open, facing down the grass like someone had hastily dropped it. Blake gently took it, using her hand to clean up the pages now stained with grass and dirt.

As Yang stood there, she could picture the scene. Blake reading in the grass when Jacques and his men came to suddenly grab and handcuff her, the book thrown to the ground without care. Just thinking about it made her angry again, but seeing Blake handle the object with such care made it quickly subside.

“I know.” Blake said, slowly sitting in the grass, putting the closed book on her lap. “But this is the only place we can go that has a view to the sky – and grass.”

She was right. The EMDF complex was as gray and white as they came, with just a few potted plants in rooms like the cafeteria and the residential area’s break rooms. They didn’t have open fields with plants, grass or flowers, and even to see the open sky it was still in windowed tunnels that connected some of the facilities. Walking around the outside was strictly ruled as to not bother the people working with the mechas and other tech, going around in cars and other vehicles.

Yang was used to seeing the outside and plants from the cockpit of her mecha when in battle and didn’t realise how long since she actually stepped on grass without being inside a giant robot, another thing she took for granted and that Blake clearly appreciated a lot more than she did. It made guilt pang on her heart, imagining what conditions the woman in front of her, eyes closed and feeling the small breeze, had to live until now, to feel glad with such a small patch of grass and sky open to her.

“I’m sorry.” Yang spurted out, and Blake looked at her a little confused. “I mean- I’m just… used to things like this that I don’t properly appreciate them, I guess, and don’t think about it as much as you do.”

Yang still stood awkwardly on the small garden area. If Blake were any other woman she would already sat besides her and planning some kind of move to get closer.

But because Blake was _Blake_ (which she still didn’t know what that meant), she felt completly disarmed and her bravado gone. Even as a teen she wasn’t as awkward as this. Strangely, this feeling of uncertainty and the adrenaline that came with it felt a lot better than her usual overconfidence in this matters.

It made everything feel a lot more _real_ than it ever had been and despite probably looking really stupid, Yang liked it. A lot.

Blake probably sensed the way Yang was tiptoeing around her and chuckled lightly. It made Yang a little less nervous, that her stupidity made Blake laugh – a sound she was certain the woman didn’t make a lot, given her usual poker face and deadpan.

“You can sit on the bench for today,” Blake said, with a laugh still in her tone. “Maybe next time I’ll allow you to sit on the grass as well.”

“Oh, so that’s how we are playing this?” Yang said, smiling as well, as she made her way towards the only bench in the garden. Blake was still sitting relatively close to it, so Yang was okay with it. “You sure have a lot more sass in you than you show, Belladonna.”

When Blake said her family name the first thing Yang thought was how beautiful it was, just as much as her first name. The second thing she thought was that it would sound great to say it.

She was right about both things.

“Try being on an alien planet which historically attacked your kind and not be as guarded as you can,” Blake said. By her tone, Yang guessed she wasn’t trying to bring up the past as topic of conversation, though. “I think it’s wise to keep your cards close to your chest, even on how you actually are. Although…” She looked up at Yang sheepishly. “I think you would act pretty much the same. _For some reason_ I think mind games and politics aren’t your game.”

“Geez, people are already bad mouthing me to you? Talk about making a bad impression.” Yang chuckled. “Let me just say that if it’s Jaune, he has it out for me.”

“Actually, even without the doctor saying anything, I would say it’s pretty obvious.” Blake said, simply, shrugging her shoulders. “Jumping at an exploding robot is a big one, but the flames on the jumpsuit are what gave you out.”

Yang laughed heartly, feeling warm in her chest.

“Come on! These jumpsuits are _horrible_ ,” Yang lunged a bit foward, closer to Blake. “And it was my sister’s idea! I mean, I did agree to it, but…”

“ _I think_ she was trying to say something about your temper to you, but I’m guessing she’s as subtle as you are.”

“It’s actually to make me faster, acording to her, thank you very much.” Yang said, crossing her arms. “But I don’t know if there’s any science behind that.” Yang slumped back on the bench, the movement making her sore side hurt a bit. “And... I thought you were going to ask me more about Earth?”

“Well…” Blake moved her head so Yang couldn’t see her face clearly but she could still see how her ears folded slightly. “You’re from here so I guess it counts.” She sighed. “Sorry.” Blake apologised, for some reason. “I really just wanted to talk to you.”

The honesty and bluntness of her words made Yang perk up and blush as well. She wasn’t expecting that.

“I-” She began, but Blake interrupted, facing her again and with her hands held up.

“N-not in that way! I mean-” She stumbled with her words, looking around. “It’s just- I don’t get it.” Blake looked at the ground, grabbing tufts of grass. Her tone grew more serious, heavy. “How can you trust us so quickly. How you almost sacrificed yourself for us when we were trying to kill you, hurt your friend,” Her words now came out like a flood had been released. She wasn’t look at Yang, like she couldn’t, her eyes focused on the grass she was holding like a lifeline. “And then again, you went running, hurting yourself and trusting us blindly, without even knowing if what I said was the truth.” Blake took a deep breath, as if grounding herself. With it she gained strength enough to lift her head and finally look Yang in the eye.

The afternoon sun passed through the clouds in the sky above them and lit her amber eyes, glinting with confusion, doubt.

Fear.

“Why?” She asked Yang again, and the heaviness of the moment strook them both silent.

Yang saw the mask come down, finally. She saw someone who trusted and was betrayed, so many times. Someone who kept her hands at her side because she was too afraid to reach out, to what people would do once they took her hand. Would they hold her close or twist till it broke?

She saw the way Blake grabbed at the grass, keeping herself steady, still too afraid to completly reach out. But her questions, her honesty, Yang hoped it was a start. And she wasn’t going to let her down – she sincerely hoped that.

So with, tooking a small breath, she answered. First with her eyes, then with her words.

“You said I’m not one of mind games and politics,” She began, and felt Blake intently looking at her. Felt that the moment was make it or break it for what their relationship (if you could call it that) would be. “You’re right. I’m not.” She said, with complete sincerity. “My dad has a tattoo on his arm. Maybe it was a middle age crisis that came too soon, he trying to look cool for us. It’s a flaming heart close to his shoulder. He says it’s because he always “wears his heart on his sleeve” and that if I took anything from him besides the blonde hair and good looks,” Yang chuckled, remembering his words. “It’s that I’m the same. I don’t punch people just because I’m a brute, but sure, that’s part of it – it’s also because I’m direct. With my feelings and my _gut_. And I had a gut feeling about you, Blake Belladonna,” She loved how the name sounded coming from her mouth. “About you, and your friend. That you’re not bad people, and all you’ve done so far is to save the ones you love. And that makes us, the same.”

“A… gut feeling? You meaning you risked your life, your status and your word for your _gut_?” Blake asked, dumbfounded.

“Yep.” Yang said, popping the ‘p’, responding as simply as she could. “I think things like this should be as simple as that. My gut said that Jacques Schnee was a jackass from the start, and it was right. It said that Weiss Schnee was a lot nicer than all the ice around her made it look like,” Yang chuckled, memories of her first time meeting Weiss flooding back. “And it said, since the start of this war five years ago, that there was more to it. And the five years I’ve been fighting I was waiting for the answers to it. And then you people showed up.” The fight, the hardest one they ever faced came back to her. Her eyes hardened a little. “ _And_ _then_ , in the middle of it, despite being on an _alien planet_ _and with the people who tortured your kind_ , the first thing you thought when you saw that _other dumb blonde_ coming out of his mecha was to help him. Even if that made you vulnerable to any attack. At the moment it was simple.” And her eyes softened as she looked at Blake, who had her mouth slightly open, at the same time entrapted by Yang’s words and completely flabbergasted by them. “My gut said that you were not bad people. And that _you_ were the answers I was looking for. It was easy to know what to do.”

As Yang finished talking, she closed her eyes, feeling the breeze that the open ceiling allowed to come through. She focused on the sound of rustling grass around her. On Blake’s breathing slowing as she digested Yang’s words.

She opened her eyes and found Blake still looking at her. It was like Blake’s heart had settled. On what, Yang didn’t know. But the serene look that blossomed in the other woman’s face was a pretty good giveaway.

“You’re pretty stupid.” Blake said simply.

Yang looked shocked, confused and afronted. Then she laughed loudly, the sound echoing through the almost empty garden.

“Yeah, I hear that a lot. But that stupidity has brought me a long way so I’m sticking to it.” And while she _was_ being stupid, Yang went forward- “It also didn’t hurt that you were really good looking so-”

Now it was Blake’s turn to be shocked, confused and afronted. But, differently from Yang, she just blushed and chuckled lightly.

“Now that’s something I heard from doctor Arc. That you’re a real _charmer_.” Blake said. “But I’m still not sure on that one.”

“Maybe we’ll find out?” Yang asked, still jokingly in tone but with the truth hidden somewhere in the mess of it.

“Maybe.” Blake answered, her voice low. “For now, you could actually tell me more about Earth.”

And they spent the rest of the afternoon with Yang actually explaining more about Earth as Blake explained to her a little about her planet, but with Yang talking a lot more – because she was that kind of person and because Blake still had some cards close to her chest.

Yang felt like Blake had tested her for how much she could trust, but more than that, that she was looking for something other than grass to hold on.

Yang hoped it would be her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Buzz buzz.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> It's here, finally happened! The world needed a pandemic to make me create the courage to write something. Oh well.  
> So, yeah. This is my first fanfic, I've been dreaming of writing a bumleby mecha AU since I read a Pacific Rim AU here in AO3 (The Mechanic and the Engineer if I'm not mistaken!), and today it happened! Hope you guys like it. I have the whole thing outlined and really hope to update with some frequency and finish this bad boy up. It's gonna be a long one, I think - I'm doing a lot of worldbuilding and hopefully won't dig any plotholes with it... Shoulda just done a one shot for starters, eh? Haha. 
> 
> Quick addon: english is NOT my first language, so any spelling mistakes or grammatical error, please point out so I can better learn, although I usually google up the words I'm unsure. 
> 
> Anyway. Please be gentle, although constructive criticism is always welcome! The title is from a Twenty One Pilot's lyric.
> 
> You can find me on twitter @Martchelab. I'm avoiding social media during social distancing but if you tag me I'll probably see it. Go there and bug me to keep writing.
> 
> (The whole thing was written while I listened to Elton John's "Tiny Dancer". Just a bit of trivia.)


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